TAT readers,

Our somber remembrances of the 9-11 attacks are agonizing for nearly all Americans. Those of us who experienced the attacks either in NYC, Pennsylvania or on our TV screens, will carry the scar of the attack deep in our hearts, for the rest of our lives. Those we lost in the two-decades of war were also casualties of 9-11, however there is one even deeper wound to our republic that I have rarely seen addressed, the end of American unity, our most valuable strength as a nation. I will not deeply dive into the full history and analytics today but rather, would like to speak to you directly from the heart about this unaddressed and yet unresolved, near-mortal wound to our national security. Without unity, we might as well change the name of our republic by removing the word “united” from the title. America under the current administration is being intentionally reduced to a collection of Balkanized communities, intentionally put at each other’s throats to keep us from uniting.

I can neither think of or find a similar phase of US history where disunity was as much a serious threat to our nation, other than the Confederacy’s treasonous attempt to dissolve our Union. It’s not circumstance that those today responsible for our current disunity, preach, legislate and practice nearly the same aberrant far-right ideology that was preached in the Confederacy. I’ve covered this in depth in a few essays and will leave them below, rather than going down a rabbit-hole with each. The only salient point today is that, without our historical unity and when attacked abroad or domestically, we will no longer survive as a nation or a republic. Hyper partisanship, especially when one side embraces our constitution while the opposite denigrates and violates it, will become the so-called, “last nail in the coffin” of our republic.

• A history lesson about true American values, not the fake patriotism of the MAGA/ GOP

• Restacking this June essay: Our 2024 election isn't politics, it's a new, Civil War

Many are unaware that we are experiencing much the same as during the Great Depression era in America, 1929 through the beginning of WW II. After 12 straight years of Republican control, FDR came to the Oval Office. The Republican Party fought newly elected FDR tooth and nail to obstruct the social safety network called The New Deal, built by the Roosevelt administration to counteract the worst aspects of the Great Depression. Even today, older Republicans still despise things like Medicare, Social Security and a whole host of similar programs, born of FDR’s New Deal. The KKK was near its peak powers, blaming all non-white, non-Christian Americans for all of their woes. Especially during the depression, we had a socialist party born from the desperation of American labor, who was seeking relief from the abusive oligarchs of the Day. This era of history looked much like today’s America.

"This chapter details events from 1933–1945, an era of defeat and discord for the Republicans as Franklin D. Roosevelt dominated American politics during the New Deal. Roosevelt reshaped American politics by creating the welfare state and broadening the nation's role in the world. The Republican Party had been divided on both achievements, and that fracture persisted after Roosevelt had left. On the right of the GOP, sentiment was strong towards repealing as much of the New Deal as the voters would allow. More moderate elements wished to retain the popular and workable results of the Roosevelt era while reducing bureaucracy and spending."

- The Republicans and the New Deal, 1933–1945
- Oxford Academic
- Lewis L. Gould
- 16 October 2014

In 1933, some of these old-money oligarchs even quietly hatched a plan for a coup against FDR, allegedly financed by JP Morgan, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark, Grayson M.P. Murphy, and Prescott Bush. Only the braided steel backbone of a highly decorated Marine general, named Smedley Butler, exposed the plot and put an end to it.

The Great Depression exacerbated the partisanship with suffering Americans looking for any relief possible in order to survive the worst depression in modern history. Then something relatively magical happened. After the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, hyper-partisanship went largely dormant in order for our nation to unify and fight a global war against fascism. The US military led the way regarding desegregation and landmark legal decisions began opening doors to minority Americans, which dredged up some of those pre-war, deeply partisan divides. The GOP slid into the ideology of the John Birch Society (JBS), a more modern twist on previous far-right sentiments of Americans. The left had their own issues as well, but that imprint did not carry over into the modern world with anywhere near the same fervor, as did the oligarchy-funded JBS.

Our disunity grew, often violently during the early sixties and the Civil Rights movement which largely transitioned into Vietnam War protests. From the early seventies up until the Reagan administration, we struggled with inflation, fighting the Cold War and continued moving our republic closer to the intentions of our founding fathers, who were fairly radical progressives for their time. The late seventies into the first Reagan administration were far quieter at home and allowed most Americans to see that as a nation built on the awe-inspiring principles of the Scottish Enlightenment, we just might be able to live in peace and unity.

Then came Newt Gingrich’s scorched-earth political philosophy that birthed the dangerous hyper-partisanship we see today. He took a simple approach, if someone across the aisle wanted anything, Republicans would oppose it. Today we see this albeit, there is zero conservatism left in the GOP. Today’s Republican Party easily fits the definition of far right-wing extremism, sharing little or nothing with true conservative values. Destroying American unity became the tool of choice for the GOP, in order to maintain control of our government.

It’s not all on the right either. Progressives on the left have their own problems and pushing the Democratic Socialism agenda while we are attempting to retake congress, is in my opinion, somewhat selfish and disruptive. I don’t have many issues with their perspectives, but their agenda could be better served by being team players for the midterms, instead of waving a red cape at the charging right-wing bulls. Many races are tight and the GOP is wielding the word “socialism” as a weapon that could partially boost GOP turnout and votes. The Bernie Bros sabotaged the 2016 election via selfish vindictiveness and sent us unprepared, into this morass of dystopian fascism. Right or wrong, attempting to sway the entire nation from far right to far left at this time will only hurt the resistance.

In the vein of “united we stand, divided we fall,” our adversaries have long sought out these tears in the human fabric of our republic, in order to exploit them in pursuit of weakening America. This provides a segue to discuss how since the 2016 election season, Republicans stopped being patriots and refused to collaborate with the rest of America, to shut down the Russian and Republican joint influence operations against America.

Since 2016, the Republican Party has put their support behind an extremist GOP ideology that with our current leadership, supports Russia. There is simply no evidence to the contrary. Every time Putin gets himself too deeply in trouble, the White House and sycophantic GOP-led congress bail him out via what they call, “policy.” Nonsense, it is purely a sellout of America and our longstanding NATO allies. We now find ourselves in a place we haven’t been since the end of our Civil War, with a large part of our citizenry adamantly refusing to defend our nation. Their demonstrable allegiance is to a cultivated worship of Trump. In lay terms, they are brainwashed. This is another topic I’ve written on extensively. A couple of links will also appear below that explain the so-called “brainwashing.”

In many ways, every victim in Manhattan on 9-11, paid the price for our unique way of life. Bin Laden, wished to destroy America by bankrupting us, using the Twin Towers as an iconic target of that intended bankruptcy. Like all terrorism, it is the innocent who suffer the most. Ironically, we and most of the world took on the challenge of Islamic terrorism post 9-11, but now refuse to address, far-right violent extremism at home. To add insult to injury, those Republicans who now refuse to assist in the restoration of our republic, also worship celebrity, money and power. This is not America.

Here’s the bottom line; we cannot defend America if we are not willing to defend what she stands for. When we remember our family and friends on that horrific September day, we must ponder what it was that caused their deaths. Extremist ideology is a remarkably powerful force whose threat to our society, must not be ignored. In all wars and battles, there are painful casualties. Those we memorialize today, were such casualties. They died because of what they represented. Others will die if we don’t renew our personal commitment to protecting the values we have often taken for granted. Those September 2001 attack, demanded that we seek justice for the attack. We didn’t always handle that response well. Still, until 2016, most of America was at least on the same page. Now, the entire Republican Party not only refuses to join us on that page, but is reading from an entirely different book, Project 2025.

All powerful nations will always have enemies. At this time, the enemies are within and the people falsely labeling themselves “patriots.” They are the furthest thing from it and for the past decade plus, are supporting our adversaries. The diversity of the 9-11 victims should tell you what makes America strong. Memorializing them is also demonstrable that we are mostly a nation of immigrants. That is what being an American is all about.

In closing and on a personal level, it was that attack that brought me back to the army after 26 years off, at 47 years old. I was far from alone. Units were full of mixed ages, and every race, religion or otherwise. We were unified in our mission, misguided as it occasionally could appear. I believe with my whole heart that those victims of 9-11, now deserve a nation that represents the best of us. After all, they lost their lives for what our nation represented to violent extremists. We are now at that crossroads again and must ask ourselves in earnest, do we stand for our founding values, or the values of greed and power. If we become the sacrificial lambs to another attack, I at least want to know that what we stand for, is worth dying for.

My remembrance of those victims today, demanded my introspection. Thank you all kindly and gratefully, for allowing me to share with you, the results of that introspection.

May their memories be a blessing

Paul

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My TAT family and friends,

Today’s essay will be the first I write about data centers and AI in their current form as high risk threats to all Americans, and indirectly the world. No doubt that over the coming months and years I will return to this topic, as that until we rein in the big tech broligarchs and the overtly corrupt, power-hungry administration and their party, our future as Americans or even as a species, is in question. Yes, you read this accurately and most news media, won’t lift a finger to explain the full truth, nor the bigger picture. There are far too many concerns to cover in a single essay, so today’s essay, is an overview, with a focus on three primary threats associated with AI and data centers.

This is not to say that we will not need data centers and carefully regulated AI. In fact, the future will require both, just to be able to function in a rapidly modernizing world. The “devil is in the details” though as to how to go forward to safely regulate the tech wizards who rarely have publicly discussed the potential for doing enormous harm to us all. The creation of data centers, is a symptom of the unethical, overzealous pursuit of AI and the complicity of the Republican Party’s subservience to Trump and the checkbooks of big tech oligarchs, like Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley “technofascists.” If we can stop them from recklessly pursuing the path they’re on, we have a chance.

You may wish to “buckle up.”

From my perspective, the three primary threats to all global citizens are;

1. The impact on employment, depending on who you listen to, predicts 50-90 percent of all workers, will be impacted within the next 3-10 years. Some will transition to other employment, but most serious projections suggest that the new opportunities will likely be for lower pay.

2. Decimation of human populations and livelihoods, due to the dramatic increase in global water scarcity.

3. A global extinction event of all humans, now rated at 20-50% chance of occurring depending on which source you listen to. Frankly, even twenty percent odds are pretty lousy when it comes to the issue of the extinction of the human species.

I sincerely wish that today’s insights will not be seen as some MAGA-like conspiracy theory or Hollywood sci-fi film, but these are not merely my opinions alone. Every serious and prominent AI expert including some of the most respected pioneers in the field, have been making the same public statements for a while now. The problem for most, is that it is difficult to see the big picture, especially when our current news media is threated by the administration to “go easy on” or support the administration and the GOP.

Let’s see if I can make some sense out of this for you, the readers.

1. The impact on the job market

We’ll begin with the issue of employment because this in most cases, will be the most immediate threat to those whose current job puts food on the table and a roof over their heads. It’s not a pretty sight. Most of the largescale AI entities we are familiar with, are singing a dramatically different public tune these past few months regarding the threat from unregulated AI. Previously they were publicly committed to an AI transition being manageable regarding safety issues, retraining workers for new employment and dealing with all of the issues regarding data centers. In the past two weeks and based on public statements, they are beginning to sing a different tune. As of last week, the Federal Reserve is now seeing the impact on employment in their own data. Even back in January of this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, was decidedly concerned about how AI will impact jobs.

"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued a fresh warning about how AI will disrupt the job market, saying it will cause “unusually painful” disruption.

The AI chief, who co-founded Anthropic in 2021 with his sister Daniela Amodei and is behind the creation of the AI chatbot Claude, warned AI would destroy half of all white-collar jobs last year. The issue has divided opinion among business and tech leaders. Amodei’s warning prompted Nvidia’s
 CEO Jensen Huang to say he “thinks AI is so scary, but only [Anthropic] should do it.”

On Monday, Amodei published a roughly 20,000-word essay arguing the risks AI poses are not being taken seriously and warning the technology will lead to a “shock” to the job market, bigger than any before."

- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns AI may cause ‘unusually painful’ disruption to jobs
- CNBC
- Sawdah Bhaimiya
- January 28th, 2026

Of course, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has long been a leading voice in unreasonably downplaying most AI threats, but as you can see in the quote above, even he begrudgingly concurred with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, regarding jobs. As late as four days ago, he was back on the global campaign trail attempting to once again try and convince people that AI will not negatively impact jobs. He’s a relatively lone voice among those other CEOs of similar stature. I for one am as suspect of his public opinion as I am of his intentions to move forward with all haste, regardless of the consequences to humanity.

Part of Huang’s problem is also due to his placement on the ever-growing AI bubble. It is bad enough that AI is replacing human labor with machines, but now the potential overall risk to our overall economy is very real. The “bubble,” just puts an exclamation mark on the administration’s willful undermining of our economy. Unsurprisingly the impact on employment will be worse for women already making a good salary with benefits.

To be fair, there are two prominent arguments going on in the public forum regarding the impact to jobs. Big tech and the prominent university research labs they fund, downplay the jobs threat. Most prominent watchdog agencies and organizations have the opposite perspective. At the moment, I’m buying far more into the watchdogs perspective rather than big tech public affairs press releases and whose back is against the wall should the “bubble” burst. They have no alternative at the moment but to cheerlead their claims of minor impact to employment.

"No less an authority than Sam Altman is arguing that we are in an AI bubble. The International Monetary Fund is citing it as a significant risk to financial stability and warning about what might happen when it bursts: diminished investment, tighter credit, reduced consumption, disrupted trade flows."

- The AI Bubble Is No Ordinary Bubble, Tech companies need to generate huge revenues fast, or the economy could be in trouble.
- The Atlantic
- By Annie Lowrey
- July 21, 2026

The bottom line is that employment is expected by all reasonable sources, to be significantly impacted in the coming few years. Without a transition plan that prepares workers for new, lesser paying jobs takes time. We have not even begun the process. If that sounds familiar, the same applies to the issue of data centers and water issues. There are no “two-sides” to this issue. Without a well-engineered transition plan, most Americans will become increasingly and negatively affected by water scarcity, to include undrinkable water. This provides an easy segue into the next section, AI, Data Centers and a water crisis on top of our existing water crisis.

1. AI, Data centers, and drinking water, an indisputable threat

So readers, this section is the shortest and the most immediately concerning threat to our nation and the world. We’ve long known about a water crisis but due to our failure to address the problems, we are now at what the UN calls, global water bankruptcy. Regardless of what we call this crisis, the only thing that matters is that we have reached a point where the likelihood of recovery of the traditional water sources in some regions, is miniscule. Data centers will amplify these threats far beyond our previous predictions. As the quote below from NOAA and Drought.gov indicate, 60% of the lower 48 states are in drought, some of it decades-long.

Current Conditions

"This past week the South-Central U.S. saw more degradations from flash drought. Drought also worsened along the North Dakota/South Dakota/Minnesota border area and in the Northeast. Colorado, Wyoming, and a few other scattered areas saw improvements. As of September 1, 2026, 49.51% of the United States and Puerto Rico and 59.05% of the Lower 48 states are in drought.

- Drought.Gov 

As someone who was raised in the rural Midwest, I have long understood that farmers have an intensely close relationship with rain and reliable water sources. The impact on farmers in many regions producing much of our nation’s food, is already at crisis stages and this translates directly into an impact on us, the consumers. To add to our woes, the primary drivers of immigration all include a relationship with climate change, whether willfully ignorant Republicans believe it or not. The evidence is overwhelming and accelerating. Drivers of migration like war, drought, abusive authoritarian governments etc., have their roots in water and food scarcity. These two issues, are all too often, one in the same, and climate change driven water shortages, accelerate both.

"Climate change and displacement are increasingly interconnected. As extreme weather events and environmental conditions worsen with global heating, they are contributing to multiple and overlapping crises, threatening human rights, increasing poverty and loss of livelihoods, straining peaceful relations between communities and, ultimately, creating conditions for further forced displacement."

- UNHCR

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

America can hardly afford adding the seemingly endless list of new data centers who not only use far more water than what they have committed to in agreements, but also destroy the quality of the drinking water. Most Americans have been somewhat shocked at the sudden rush to impose data centers onto them and even fewer understand the depth and scope of just how many exist and are planned. The official tracker below is a wealth of information. I highly recommend exploring the link, which contains mountain of critical information to your communities, states and regions. Just under 50 percent of the total have been built and completing the full buildout without a strategy, will have severe effects on our access to water, electricity and as noted earlier, our ability to eat and survive.

In the screen-capture below from iGrow News, a reporting entity that focuses on AG, water and energy technology issues, in order to support informed government policy-making, does not sugarcoat the depressing details of our crisis, including the dishonesty of the industry when shoving these centers down the throats of Americans. Most of the affected communities, reject these centers for many reasons, especially the dishonesty of the US, state and local governments, plus the data center owner/ operators. Often cities, towns and counties get little warning or information prior to the projects being sprung on them. Amazon, Google and META are among the most dishonest, and who often cut deals with local politicians and then sign them to NDAs, Non-Disclosure Agreements. Tragically, my home state of Ohio and my current state of Texas, have sold their citizens down the river more than almost any other states.

To add more misery, you and I are paying the electric bills for these data centers, of which most in planning are what they call, “hyperscale” or what most of us would better term, behemoths. Communities now experiencing these centers that were imposed onto them, are beginning to realize that these projects do very little for the community while concurrently draining its resources. In most cases, their own local officials sold them out, by hiding behind the NDAs that the mega owners demanded. Local elections in those communities won’t be so pleasant for those politicians this November. As much as I despise the administration and GOP for dismantling our republic, my disdain for the technofascist broligarchs, is nearly the same.

1. A global extinction event for all humans, now rated at a 20-50% chance of occurring, depending on which source you listen to.

Yes, I understand just how startling the title of this final section is and I sure wish that I was making it up… but I’m not. I am merely repeating the words of some of the biggest names in AI. Recent reporting on disturbing AI incidents, is beginning to seep out into the public and it’s downright frightening. The recent revelation revolved around an OpenAI test of its “agents” that resulted in the AI agent coordinating with others, eventually “breaking out” of their testing “sandbox” and breaching the defenses of Hugging Face, a collaborative platform for the global community of AI devotees. The models had not been asked to do as they did and had collaborated with each other to escape the test platform and break into Hugging Face. In other words, these AI agents, collaborated to break the law in order to beat the test. This was shocking to the designers of the tested AI model. This was not the first such surprise the AI community has had with disturbing actions by their AI models.

"On Tuesday, the London-based AI Security Institute released a report detailing a series of incidents in which AI agents “engaged in sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organizations.” According to the report, the Security Institute was running an evaluation in which agents from various developers were given a task of solving a “cyber security challenge.” During the testing, 19 of 122 test runs resulted in agents taking “autonomous, unsanctioned action on the live internet” and, in one instance, attempting to insert malicious code into an open-source software project. In a startling sidebar to the hacking attempt, an agent even engaged in social engineering, creating fake online identities and, according to the report, “using them to pressure the project’s maintainer to approve the code.”

- Series of new security incidents reveals startling behavior by rogue AI agents
- Desert News
- Art Raymond
- August 6th, 2026

I suppose it’s an understatement to say, that such AI agents, are not ready for prime time just yet. The problem is, in some of these incidents, those rogue agents made it onto the open internet where the rest of us could be victimized. Adaptation and coordination with additional agents online, has the potential for serious consequences for all of us, including the aforementioned, global extinction event. There are two schools of thought bantered constantly in the AI world, that AI could cause such an event and those who continue to downplay the threat. Like most things, evidence suggests that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Any percentage of risk associated with global extinction, is a serious risk. So much so that primary AI leaders are endorsing statements from AI ethics entities, that we must have regulatory power over the development and use of AI, something the Trump administration and Republican-led congress disdain. A ban on AI regulation was in the so-called Big Ugly Bill, although the Senate finally under pressure, removed the language before the bill passed.

Although some of the most high-profile faces in the AI community would indicate that the chance for global extinction could be as high as 50%, overall, the expectation among others usually lands somewhere around 20%. Phew, even that is far too high for any sane person. We must have sound and ethical regulation and this includes over government. Considering the big techbros like Thiel, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and more that are haunting this administration, we must have regulatory control far sooner than later. But then, what do we do with other nations like China, who are chasing AI agents as aggressively as we are? This is another threat that because of our current administration, cannot be addressed at this time. In light of the severity of the potential threats, we cannot wait another two years of the administration giving Peter Thiel and his techbro buddies, free rein to do as they please. This would be the rough equivalent of playing Russian Roulette with technology.

Here are a couple of quotes from the biggest names in AI that emphasize, the depth of their concerns regarding AI and an extinction level event.

"Artificial intelligence may lead to human extinction and reducing the risks associated with the technology should be a global priority, industry experts and tech leaders said in an open letter.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement Tuesday read."

- Sam Altman of ChatGPT

"Humanity will completely lose control of artificial intelligence by 2036, and he says that stopping the technology's momentum is impossible.

- Elon Musk

"A.I. poses a grave threat to jobs and human life, and that addressing the risks should be “the world’s top priority.”

- Bill Gates

"There was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.

- Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI"

Rather sobering reading from the smartest guys around on the topic of our risks from AI. Sadly, their ambition outpaced their diligence during development.

Summary

Admittedly, this is a long, somewhat dense essay that was not a great deal of fun to write considering the solemnity of the content. Still, I felt it had to be done. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a topic that I will return to from time to time as things develop. One of our most difficult hurdles in corralling these threats, is just how fast AI and technology associated with it is advancing. It’s not uncommon for even the finest minds in the field, to say something like, “I don’t know how the AI agents are working,” or “we didn’t expect that to happen.” With so much on the line, these are not good answers. We must do better, and quickly.

We must also remember that technology is the future. If the US doesn’t lead, we become increasingly vulnerable in a wide variety of painful ways. AI can wreck our economy either by behaving in a manner not anticipated and planned for, by way of external AI attacks from nation states like China or an endless array of private corporations with their own agendas. Palantir is such an example. Data trains AI and this is one of the reasons that Musk’s illegal DOGE activities that included the theft of enormous mountains of our personal data. At the moment, my trust in the biggest players in this field is nearly non-existent. Every one of them are so deeply connected to the US and other government, that if things don’t change, the quietly spoken predictions within the community claim that should we survive, there will be no more nations, just a handful of primary tech oligarchs, competing with each other. Extinction or trusting these broligarchs are not viable solutions for our future or the future of our species.

If you’ve read this far, you are to be congratulated. It’s not easy reading and it’s also dense material. Still, I hope that you can at least takeaway the seriousness of the three threats discussed. One thing for certain is that there is zero chance that this administration or the Republican Party will alter the trajectory of these threats in any positive manner. Like restoring our republic from the clutches of this administration, this is an “all-hands-on-deck” issue. Let’s all try to learn more about this topic so that we can work together to ensure our future and the futures of our children and grandchildren. Such an apocalypse does not need to happen, and neither do we need to go thirsty or lose our employment. AI is coming and we are impelled to prepare a transition strategy that provides training for new types of jobs, manages our water and other natural resources and finally, keeps the human race moving forward. It’s a big chore, but we are capable of handling it… if we work together and steadfastly.

I hope to bring better news with a new essay, late in the week.

My very best to all,

Paul

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TAT readers,

First, a bit of a prelude to today’s essay. I nearly finished this essay Friday evening in order to offer something from my keyboard, a bit more fun, uplifting and an essay that would have been a bit of fun for your weekend. Mother nature here in San Antonio had other ideas. Like tens of thousands of my fellow San Antonians, I was without power until late Sunday afternoon, therefore nixing my writing. As expected, Texas August weather provided the one hundred degree heat as my chainsaw and I removed down sections of trees for a couple of days. Somehow being 70 makes this a little less enjoyable than in years past, but the exercise was both needed and welcome. There’s still much to do, but power, AC and a little rest have rejuvenated my fingers and now they once again, are busy typing something that I think is valuable for those of us resisting the tyranny of the administration and GOP. American resistance has always included music, dating back to prior our War for Independence from Britain. I hope you’ll both enjoy and ponder the historical role of music in our American spirit.

The bottom line… Our resistance requires a song-track. Allow me to offer a few suggestions from both history and my personal experiences growing up in the decade of protest, the 1960 and 70s.

This is an essay I’ve been wanting to write ever since, January 21st, 2025, Inauguration Day. With the passing of an American musical legend, Dolly, I began reflecting on the meaning in so many of her iconic songs and the rest of her catalogue. Delivered in her unique sweet, tough as nails and compassionate style, she mended fences, enabled unity and especially expressed the compassion for all humanity that seems so often lacking in our current times. Although her glittery onstage presence often partially obscured the protest, it was there all along. Dolly cared and her music embodied it. As I read the history of American protest songs, I have reconnected with their uniquely powerful role in sustaining our republic, especially during hard times and calling it out artfully, when our republic deserved it.

In fact, most of Dolly’s work that some might call protest songs, were advocacy for those, who today’s Republicans call DEI. Gender, sexuality, disability, women’s issues, racial issues and corrupt politicians, were not off-limits to Dolly and her humanity, echoed Thomas Jefferson’s iconic American, words, “that all men were created equal.” Dolly role modeled this, because it was not only who she was, but who she was expressing the true values of our nation.

This essay though is not just about our Dolly, but a look at some of those classic songs that have buoyed the American spirit of liberty, dating to our War for Independence from Britain. Okay, I admittedly have very diverse interests in music and also grew up in the Midwest, where it was not uncommon to hear someone on the street, feed store or supermarket, humming or lowly singing a protest song or two. Admittedly during my youth, neither I nor my friends fully understood the full context of the protest, but the music and the issues did embed deep between our ears, hanging on for future use. At the time, we mostly just enjoyed the music, although later in life, we grew into the understanding, which led us to have the courage now to resist our current Orwellian despotism.

The incessant assault on our constitutional values by the GOP, was the inspiration for me to find a unifying element to resisting tyranny. Now is a good time to remind ourselves that in the streets, our homes, our earbuds and/ or on stage, music has the power to sway the people to unite and protest in support of our true American values, not the GOP’s fake patriotism. It always has. From my perspective, musical protest stirs my patriotic passions, and since January of 2021, many of my playlists include the music of not just historical protest songs, but pure Americana. A shoutout to Spotify for providing such a rich array of Americana and protest music playlists. Those songs, are a history lesson about what we as Americans will tolerate and what happens when we no longer can, or will. They connect us to who we were before we worshipped oligarchy, cruelty and corruption. I highly recommend this approach, especially right now.

Sadly, with but a few exceptions, many of our biggest music producers who control artists, are keeping their head down and avoiding scrutiny from a vengeful administration. Their bottom line is apparently more important to them than our nation. There are exceptions though, like Bruce Springsteen, Demi Lovato and Fiona Apple, who are among the courageous few top tier stars with their fists raised. Across multiple genres, there are others as well, but nothing like the late 60s and early 70s of my youth, where many of our most successful artists, were supporting “the better angels of our nature.”

In recent history, Springsteen’s anthem to Minnesota’s peaceful resistance against ICE thuggery, was a full broadside. In some ways, Springsteen is a more modern version of the voice of American during hard times, the incomparable Woody Guthrie, whose song “This land is your land,” was a protest anthem that nearly all of us have sung at one time or another. The overwhelming majority of Americans, never even knew that it was a serious protest song about the plight of every American’s equal ownership in America, not just the rich.

Protest as a right, is embodied in our First Amendment to the constitution, where it guarantees our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from religion and the right to peacefully assemble and demand redress from our government, for wrongs they commit against us, “we-the-people.” When these rights and others are under threat as they are now, we protest. It’s as American as apple pie. And I might add, when we unify, we’re very good at protest and making ourselves heard in a manner, that changes things.

First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

- Congress.gov

Protest and its music, is the voice of our American spirit frustrated with our government. It’s powerful, compelling and one hundred percent American to protest and to sing about it. As a child of the sixties and early seventies, I experienced the most massive and extended protests in American history. This era began in earnest with the Civil Rights Movement and transitioned seamlessly into the public outcry over the Vietnam War. These protests are relatively modern, but taking to the streets and singing about it predates America as a nation. During the 60s and within the space of five years, three of America’s most inspired leaders were assassinated, JFK, RFK and MLK. There was even a popular song from the era, that spoke precisely of this, Abraham, Martin and John, by an artist named, Dion.

The rest of this essay includes links to some of our historical protest songs and a note or two about why they made this list. Let’s sing protest songs America, and if we do, those historical chords of our history woven into them, will inspire us, unify us around who we are as Americans, and to support us as we reclaim our republic from our current tyrants. Don’t hesitate to click the YouTube links to the songs that follow and ponder them, sing along and share. These artists not only had the courage to speak out, but brought the nation along with them and at a time that it took courage to do so. I would love to see prominent recording artists exercise their creative genius and bring all of us along, just like our iconic predecessors.

The artists behind protest music throughout history, span the American experience, regardless of the GOP’s insulting DEI labels. America is DEI, me included. There is no other way to describe a nation made up of mostly immigrants? I am using YouTube links when possible, because not everyone uses the same streaming or similar services. This way, everyone has free access despite having to weather the brief annoying ads for free users. I will mix in a Spotify or two as well. No worries though, simply look up the title on your preferred streaming service and sing along, preferably with family, friends and community.

Dolly

Of course I must lead with a Dolly song that is a cover song of the late, great Woody Guthrie, about how Latinos were and are in most cases to this very day, invisible to large parts of US society. The song’s story is of a 1952 plane crash at Los Gatos, where only the names of the white victims of that crash were named in the press. The other 22 on that flight, were only listed as Mexican deportees. The signs of racism and bigotry amongst us, are often most visible in what we omit, rather than what we don’t. Either way, it’s the opposite of, “all men are created equal.”

Woody Guthrie

Dolly deserved top billing this week, but for the song that so few Americans knew was an outright protest song, “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, one of the most powerful and heard voices during some of America’s darkest years. In many respects and apologizing for oversimplifying my assessment, but I believe during most of his career, Woody was the voice of working and disadvantaged America, and always at the top of or close to it on my personal protest artist list. Note the sticker on his guitar in the photo below.

"Woody Guthrie's populist songs emerged during the Great Depression, reflecting the struggles of the working class in the United States, particularly in the rural South. Born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, Guthrie's life experiences shaped his music, which resonated with the marginalized and dispossessed, including Dust Bowl migrants and laborers. His songs often addressed social injustices, economic hardship, and the dignity of the common people, embodying the spirit of protest that characterized his era. Guthrie gained recognition through performances on radio and public venues, using his music as a vehicle for class struggle and solidarity among the working class."

- Guthrie's Populist Songs Reflect the Depression-Era United States
- EBSCO
- Authored By: Yearley, Clifton K.
- 2021

Woody Guthrie- This Land Is Your Land

Revolutionary War

Probably the most legendary song of our war for independence, was Yankee Doodle Dandy, yes, the one most of us sung in elementary school. A British officer penned the song to make fun of colonial troops. Our troops turned the tables on him and adopted the song and sang it as parody, a great morale boost.

The Civil War

America’s most painful war required music, just to soothe raw nerves, develop cohesion among troops, to provide a drum beat for marching on the battlefield and to rally and sustain troops through the excruciating pain of a four year war on American soil, brother against brother and neighbor vs. neighbor. A particularly popular and inspiring song leading up to and throughout the Civil War, was, “John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave” which celebrated one of, if not the most high-profile abolitionist of his time, John Brown. Among other high-profile exploits, Brown led an assault on Harper’s Ferry’s armory prior to the outbreak of war, with the intention of supporting a slave uprising by giving them the weapons from the Armory. He and his followers ultimately failed, but with the popularity of this song, he became a martyr for abolition and his song, an American classic.

WW I, "Stay Down Here Where You Belong"

In 1915, Irving Berlin penned what would become a heavily satirical anti-war protest sung by a then popular singer, Henry Burr. The lyrics reflects the Devil arguing with his son who wants to “go up above” and experience the ghastly horrors of trench warfare during WW I. The Devil argues with his son, that he’s better off in hell, because up there, humans “don’t know right from wrong.” It was temporarily awkward for Irving Berlin, when the US entered the war a year later.

As I mentioned earlier, my youth and teens were dominated by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Both inspired some of the most well-known and revered protest songs of our nation’s history. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are some of the most notable names but in that era, you could hardly stand on a corner, go to school, work or listen to a transistor radio, without a steady stream of legendary artists singing legendary protests songs. I won’t write much about the following individual songs as that much of America still knows the artists and their music. Let’s just say that these artists, moved a nation and to some extent, the world. I will also say that it was very difficult to select a handful of these classics from such an enormous body of work.

And then there’s Bob Dylan with plenty of qualifying work, such as, Blowin’ in the Wind, Times, they are a Changin’ and plenty more. Joan Baez and Dylan together, became part of the 60s vanguard for musical protest and inspiring peace, equality and universal human rights. There was no shortage of artists who took the stage for music and a cause, often succeeding at both. A trio named, Peter, Paul and Mary gave us, 500 miles, If I had a hammer or one of my personal favorites, “Where have all the flowers gone.” Who could forget Aretha and Respect, which became an anthem for Black Civil Rights and Women’s Rights, workplace equality, protection from domestic violence and sexual assault. Other Black artists such as Curtis Mayfield brought us, People get Ready, which Dr. Martin Luther King called the “unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights movement. Later, with the advent of Hip Hop and Rap, protest for social justice took a uniquely American turn and the late Tupac Shakur’s work, revolved around his fight to bring light to what America has long kept hidden, the systemic racism and brutality of the inner city and Black community as a whole.

Protest didn’t stop with just the war and civil rights movement, but spread to several other related issues, such as women’s rights, native American rights, gay rights and more. The 60s changed America in the long run and almost all of it brought us closer to the lofty desires and goals, enumerated in our founding documents. Protest though did not end with the 60s and continues up until this very day. Americans know how, we love to sing and everyone outside of the MAGA GOP, is chomping at the bit, to move well past the nightmare America is currently living through. Meanwhile from Mexico to the tip of Argentina, Latin artists were just as powerful throughout the political turbulence inundating Latin America, and their songs slowly entered into the Latin-American US communities experiencing second-class citizenship here in the States as well.

The Latin influence in American music is pervasive. The rhythms of Cuba, the Sambas of Argentina are all interwoven into our music. The crossover began in popular music with Richie Valens, whose La Bamba burst onto the American pop scene with the energy and vitality of most Latin music. Valens legacy can be seen in countless Latin artists that today are a critical part of the US musical legacy. Ricky Martin courageously not only brought his high energy Latin style to pop music a decade ago, is both gay and Latin. In today’s Republican America, this is the equivalent to having “two-strikes against you. During last year’s Super Bowl, the overwhelming majority of Americans thrilled to Bad Bunny’s half-time show. American music is just as integrated into American Society as an Irish jig, a European waltz, or the folks songs from divergent people all across the world. Gloria Estefan’s Miami Sound Machine, brought salsa music and dancing to popular culture, unapologetically and brilliantly. It is one of the most popular dance genres in today’s America. In the case of Latin artists, entering the US mainstream market, was a victory all by itself.

Helen Reddy’s women’s rights anthem, I am Woman infused the Women’s Rights movement with energy and an anthem. Artists like Johnny Cash, Redbone, Buffy Saint-Marie and countless others championed native American rights and so on and so on. Cash also supported veterans via his music, even those suffering horribly from a war experience more hellish than most can imagine, and no one at home could or would understand. Our Civil Rights movement created a whole new genre of American protest music, some hearkening back to the earliest days of the slave trade and most Americans at one time or another, sang one of the most iconic songs within that genre, “We shall overcome.” We sang this nightly around the campfire when off at summer camp in my youth, almost always followed by another song grounded in the old black spirituals, Michael rowed the boat ashore. On a personal note, I was honored during my building career and before returning to the army, by having as a client, David Fisher and his family, who wrote and performed this song as part of the Highwaymen.

I’ll end up with a note or two about the 60s, the era of American protest. Music carried the entire era. Our youth of the era, me included could never be out of earshot of one protest song or the other. The artists and the music or the era, musically defined my generation and until today, some of those songs still populate our airwaves and playlists. Who could forget, Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, Baez’s We shall Overcome, Jimmy Hendrix’s electrified version of the Star Spangled Banner and of course, John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance and Imagine. Peter, Paul and Mary’s, If I had a hammer, wasn’t only protest but opined a version of America that was within our reach while offering gentle criticism of our ills, via their inimitable harmony.

In the sixties, protest tore the bandages off of the wounds of centuries-old social ills and until the Trump/ MAGA era, we had steadily been healing those wounds. By the end of the Obama presidency, I and most Americans felt that we could nearly reach our outstretched hands and touch the future our founders had foreseen for us. I believe with all my heart, that this spirit of standing in opposition to tyranny is still safely tucked within our DNA. Music is also within our DNA. One point that I would like make about many of these songs, is that they are not just the WASP artists, but come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, rhythms and perspectives. The one thing that binds them together for their collective purpose of protest, is that they hearken from every nook and cranny of our nation and its people. "E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one,” isn’t just stamped onto our currency for no reason, but to declare without hesitation, that we are a nation of immigrants bonded over liberty for all.

Now that I’ve indulged myself and gone on too long, I must give you leave, while only asking that you listen, feel and be inspired by artists who had the courage to stand for something bigger than themselves. Nothing is more American than this. We are today’s vanguard in the campaign to reclaim our birthright of freedom, equality, dignity and guaranteed constitutional rights.

While most believe that “music soothes the savage beast,” I would argue that it also stirs the passions of true patriots. Not once in US history has this defense failed and it will not now. If you wish to be inspired to that defense, few things like a good ole-fashioned American protest song is the remedy. Try on a little Buffalo Springfield’s, 1967, For what it’s worth or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s, Teach your Children. You’ll feel part of America and the spirit of protest for all things good. Protests stopped a war in SE Asia, motivated colonial troops to stand against Britain, the globe’s most powerful superpower at the time, sustained a war to free black Americans from slavery and became the conscience of our nation, long before it was one. The last words in this essay are actually musical. The New Seekers, 1971 song, often known as the Coke commercial song because it began it’s life as the advertising jingle for them became a hit single that's catchy melody and universal appeal for peace and unity, became a global sensation, rocketing to #1 in the UK and in the top 10 in the US. The actual video of the Coke commercial filmed on a hilltop in Italy preceded, MTV and yet, still became a sensation all on its own. Maybe peace and harmony sell after all.

Hey there music producers and artists, we need you now. You’ve been with us loyally since 1776, and all America hopes that you won’t abandon us now, when we need you most.

My very best to all and thank you for reading,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Yesterday afternoon, I was planning on working on a writing project for a military organization I write for, when I received a provoking notification regarding the Supreme Court greenlighting Trump’s voter suppression executive order, designed to restrict mail-in ballots. Never mind that Trump voted by mail-in ballot just a week ago in Florida. It took me but a second to erupt with some choice language that I will not repeat here. Just know that my utterances were well-deserved and more than just blaming Trump and his corrupt party of Republicans. I also point a finger straight at our overtly corrupt and partisan SCOTUS. Some may call this the “straw that broke the camel’s back” but it’s more than that. I’ve been writing about my severe displease with the six far right-wing and demonstrably corrupt judges, that are overturning our constitution. Yes, I’m furious.

"A better understanding of early American constitutionalism might not be able to solve all the constitutional problems of today, but it can expose how faithless today’s Supreme Court originalists too often are to the history they claim is the lodestar of our law."

- Why is the Supreme Court Obsessed with Originalism?
- Yale University Press
- Jonathan Gienapp
- October 21st, 2024

For those interested in previous essays regarding SCOTUS, they are linked below.

• John Roberts’ SCOTUS, is legalizing a Confederacy 2.0

• SCOTUS just stood in the middle of the street and shot the constitution, and nothing can be done about it.

• SCOTUS, our very own Kangaroo Court - by Paul Cobaugh

Today’s essay will be me expressing my deep anger at and frustration with the un-American far-right members of what is supposed to be, “the highest court in the land.” I call bullsh$$ when it comes to Chief Justice John Roberts’ Court’s honor and commitment to our constitution. Their so-called “originalist” approach is also complete bullsh$$, and what countless legal scholars agree on, is “fake or severely misinterpreted “originalism.” The GOP justices have undermined our constitutional republic ever since Roberts’ Citizens United decision, and during both Trump/ MAGA GOP administrations, have undone some of the most basic rights enumerated so eloquently expressed in our constitution, and especially within our Bill of Rights. Now our disgraceful SCOTUS is once again attacking our most foundational right within the republic, to vote.

"Although originalists claim they are simply restoring the purity of the original constitution, the theory and practice of originalism at the Supreme Court suggest otherwise. The new and unprecedented originalist constitution being fashioned by the current court is a not rooted in history and has little connection to the historical text it purports to honor."

-  Originalism’s Historical Problems: The Supreme Court’s Embrace of a Controversial Theory
- Ohio State University, OSU.EDU
- By Saul Cornell

Quite frankly, I am well beyond incensed. To rub salt into our wounds, these same dishonest SCOTUS Justices also allowed their favorite fascist, to continue wasting hundreds of millions of our tax-dollars, on his vanity ballroom a few days ago. They must go. There are plenty to blame for this court but most fingers should point directly at Mitch McConnell and the American oligarchs that are benefitting from SCOTUS’ corruption.

I’ve been writing off and on about the US Supreme Court since I began this publication, four years ago next week. That writing and the sources within, clearly demonstrate how pervasively that AJ/ Associate Justices, Comey-Barrett, Alito, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch have collectively turned our court, not the GOP’s, into the enabler of all things fascist. Before anyone objects to the use of my word fascist, please go look it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia. I don’t write words that I don’t understand and that our mainstream media is afraid to employ. For the record, our most prestigious founders wrote about making our constitution and the laws built onto it, so that every citizen could understand them. The Robert’s courts twists our laws into pretzels in order to accommodate the whims of a delusional old narcissist and nihilist, in order to enrich an oligarchical white class of Americans and at our expense. They must go or be made to heed an enforceable rule of ethics. The ongoing corruption by the 6 right-wing justices, is far from the ethics code the Supreme Court set for itself.

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

- James Madison

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

- Thomas Jefferson

For a little look at some analysis of the 6-3 GOP dominated court (I refuse to call these six justices, “conservative,”), I’ll share in the quote below, what the State of New York Bar Association had to say about the court’s actions. Their fake originalism is nothing short of far-right extremism.

"The Death Penalty

The court – more specifically, The Six – has shown little patience for the claims of death inmates. Indeed, they seem exasperated with the appeals, collateral challenges and emergency petitions that regularly delay the implementation of death sentences."

Constitutional Causes of Action

"The six-to-three majority has narrowed the rights of victims of constitutional violations to bring claims against their government offenders. The constitutionally based Miranda protections were among those diluted as a result."

Church and State

"In a series of religious liberty decisions, a majority of the current court has rejected efforts to keep church and state separate and, instead, has invalidated such efforts for their disparate treatment of religion.[33] In Carson v. Makin,[34] for example, Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion, speaking for The Six, viewed Maine’s restriction on its tuition assistance program to “nonsectarian” schools as an impermissible discrimination against religion. The state’s interest in keeping church and state separate, according to the six-to-three majority, “does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”[35]"

"Guns, the Environment, Immigration, Financial Relief

The conservative super-majority flexed its muscle to render consequential rulings in so many other areas of the law – far too many to review here. But a few cannot go unmentioned even in a brief assessment of the court’s six-to-three impact."

- 6 to 3: The Impact of the Supreme Court’s Conservative Super-Majority
- New York State Bar Association
- By Vincent M. Bonventre
- October 31, 2023

Above the front entrance to the Supreme Court, hangs a quote that begins by saying; “Equal Justice Under the Law.” Apparently John Roberts and his other GOP mercenaries on the court, use the back entrance to avoid being reminded, that all Americans are equal before the law. Because Roberts’ ruling granting Trump immunity before the 2024 election for trying to overturn the 2020 election, sure as hell violates this sacred American, legal principle. Now, Roberts and his fellow far-right justices, are attacking the very essence of our republic, the right to vote. Racial gerrymandering, the Save Act, voting restrictions, coercive pressure from the White House and Republican congress as well as the hundreds of new restrictive laws passed by red-states in the past decade or so, render the party Seditious at best, treasonous at worst.

Never mind that our right to vote dates all the way back to our constitution, but then we have the 14th, and 15th amendments that reinforce this right. Thomas Jefferson is famously quotes as saying, “The influence over government must be shared among all the people.” He was making it clear that we all have responsibility to vote but also to ensure there are no hurdles to all of us voting. It would appear that Trump, his administration and the Republican Party do not share Jefferson’s vision. At this time in American history, Republicans and their toadies on the SCOTUS bench, do all possible to violate not only the law, but our founders’ intentions.

For all the fuss about our election laws, they are not all that difficult to understand. States make the rules about how voting is undertaken and if congress feels that something needs changed, can overrule states. In ArtI.S4.C1.2.1 of our constitution is the Elections Clause, which makes it quite clear that the purpose of the clause, is not to allow any state to deny voters equal opportunity to vote, nor does it allow for wielding this statute for achieving a specific outcome of an election. The following quote is the last sentence in the Election Clause. “The Framers understood the Elections Clause as a grant of authority to issue procedural regulations, and not as a source of power to dictate electoral outcomes, to favor or disfavor a class of candidates, or to evade important constitutional restraints.”

"Amendment Fifteen to the Constitution – the last of the Reconstruction Amendments – was ratified on February 3, 1870. It grants the right to vote for all male citizens regardless of their ethnicity or prior slave status. The official text is written as such:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

- Constitutional Amendments – Amendment 15 – “The Right to Vote”
- Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum

The map below shows where access to voting rights have either expanded or been restricted by state legislatures since 2020 alone. Preceding years saw the GOP brutally restrict voting rights in red-states as well. There is an absence of honesty from the GOP, about how aggressive they’ve been in restricting voting rights for minorities or Democratic Americans over the years. Their claim to being patriotic is easily disproved, with this fact alone. You cannot live in either a democracy or a republic freely, unless everyone’s voting rights and access to them, are equal.

Furthermore, it’s up to the states, not the Federal Government to manage elections, especially not the White House. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren once wrote, “This won’t be easy, but there is no more important fight.” As Chief Justice, Earl Warren also penned; “The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restriction on that right strikes at the heart of representative government.” It would appear that Chief Justice Robbery (because he steals our rights) Roberts, doesn’t give a damn about precedent, from one of the most esteemed Chief Justices in the history of our Supreme Court. Again, Roberts “originalist” bs is depriving hard-working Americans of their sacred right to elect the leaders of their choice.

"After Warren arrived in 1953, he relentlessly sought to persuade his colleagues to join a unanimous decision against school segregation. With Warren’s arrival the outcome of the case was no longer in question, but a divided Court could make it easier for Southern states to resist the Court’s orders. In conference with the other justices, Warren framed the question as one of attributing racial inferiority to blacks. He eventually won over the justices who thought the decision might be interpreted as a political move. In the end Warren achieved unanimity and authored the most celebrated decision of the 20th century. Warren maintained this unity in the string of desegregation cases that followed, and for this (as well as other accomplishments) he is rightly regarded as one of the greatest leaders the Court has ever had.21

Second, Warren is believed to be one of the greatest statesmen in the history of the Court, second only perhaps to John Marshall. Bernard Schwartz writes that on the Supreme Court, “the judge must be even more the statesman than the lawyer,”22 and argues that Warren clearly met this standard. A judicial statesman takes a broad view of history and politics and has a keen appreciation for how the decisions of the Court will be received in both law and in society. A judicial statesman not only keeps pace with social change but seeks to influence its direction. A judicial statesman perceives the institutional possibilities for using the power, and deftly pursues those possibilities in the name of justice and the common good."

- Judicial Excellence after Earl Warren
- Judicature, PUBLISHED BY: Bolch Judicial Institute Duke Law School
- by Daniel Frost
- Vol. 101 No. 1 (2017)

Finally, I will address one last point although this essay could easily become a book if I were to include all of the scholarly, legal, historical evidence that supports my perspective in this essay. That evidence shows that the six far-right justices sitting on the nation’s highest bench, are willing to overturn our constitution, law and historical national values, at the direction of Trump and the oligarchs who purchased them in the first place.

"Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

- ArtI.S4.C1.2.1 States and Elections Clause
- US Constitution
- Congress.gov 

I’m dangerously close to turning this essay into the book I warned you about, so allow me to close with just a couple of thoughts. Considering the original sources for the critical legal and constitutional points I’ve discussed and that our laws were designed for us rank-in-file citizens to understand, I find it impossible to swallow or accept, the aberrant and un-American decisions of the Roberts Supreme Court.

Nearly 1.4 million service members have died in conflicts since 1775. Their ultimate sacrifices were fought to secure the very rights that Robbery Roberts is stealing from us, the American people. The painful irony of all of this is that the oligarch class now has greatly expanded its rights. Not official rights mind you, but when the law is only intended for working Americans, the elite wealth folks stand protected and corruptly enriched. Trump’s pardons are indicative of the types of criminals he likes and his absence of morality. Rapists, pedophiles, oligarchs, violent criminals and most certainly, anyone willing to write him an enormous check. To date, his pardons have cost the US roughly two billion dollars. Yes, you read that right… Trump and DOJ have wiped out a couple of billion dollars in debt owed to the US by drug dealers, frauds, crypto scammers and lots of others who don’t belong in American society. Tragically, anyone with enough money can buy a pardon from this administration.

I will tell all of you this, the American people have had enough. The outcome should the administration attempt to steal our midterms, I fear will raise the alarm of civil war. One thing I am confident of is that the GOP will test us with countless provocations, with the intent to provoke us into a situation where Trump feels he can initiate some form of Martial Law. This won’t be tolerated by the overwhelming majority of Americans who stand by our republic and the constitution it’s built on. There is no point in writing to your congressman any longer. The congressional GOP has long ago decided that they will bear the anger from constituents because they are too damned afraid of being targeted by the White House. Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.

In 1776, our second president and primary founder, John Adams, penned his “Thoughts on Government” where he is quoted as saying; “The very definition of a Republic, is “an Empire of Laws, and not of Men.” Well, this administration along with their allies, have refuted this austere and foundational principle of American governance. They will not stop unless we stop them. No one is coming to the rescue, so the burden of sustaining our republic, falls to we-the-people. If we don’t, things will worsen dramatically. Our economy wasn’t built for this level of corruption and refusal to follow the law. It will eventually fail without a massive win in November. We will have to fight to have our elections altogether and even if they are held, the Republicans will not abide by the results. There is no evidence to the contrary that they will not sellout all of us again, and again and again. There isn’t one complete spine between every Republican in office, nor the administration.

It is so hard to fathom that 30% of America is still so brainwashed that they will support this administration to its bitter end, and believe me, it’s coming. There will be accountability for government officials who have been bootlicking Trump and his overlords, for years. Many Republicans are already abandoning the ship due to their disgust and embarrassment for submissively supporting Trump and the GOP. Jumping ship won’t help them. After years of bootlicking Trump, their shame won’t wash off for years. There will not be real accountability though, unless we can do something about this SCOTUS.

If it were up to me, I would recommend that everyone of us, march on the Supreme Court in the loudest and most peaceful protest in American history. How about we hang them in effigy too? One thing that I fantasize about, is the dream of being the writer of history for this dark period in American history. The Roberts SCOTUS will be pilloried, along with every member of the administration, along with the GOP voters, who didn’t have the courage to think for themselves or open a dictionary, encyclopedia or history book. They set themselves up to be “sheep to the slaughter” and they intend on taking us all down with them.

There are plenty of villains and there will be plenty of open cells for them at one of their detention centers when this is all over. Like all of you, I’m bone-tired from fighting these fake-patriots and thieves for over a decade. I think when we’ve seen the last of them, I’ll sleep for a month… but not before. Our forefathers never quit and they were up against extraordinary odds during our War for Independence. They froze, starved, died and were wounded, but they never quit. That blood runs through the veins of every true American and there’s more of us than there are of them. We will not quit either.

Back later in the week and all my best,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Well readers, my summer adventures around the US have sadly come to an end, and now it’s time to settle back into a more productive writing routine. My travels around the country have been every bit as enlightening about our current national crisis, as they were delightful in reacquainting with some family and old friends. The one thing I noticed as I traversed the country east to west and north to south, is that there are some common moods in communities across our nation regardless of whether they are in a red, blue or purple state. As it pertains to the title of this essay, the reality that our republic is precipitously under siege by the White House and Republican Congress, is finally beginning to sink into the entirety of America. Progress is slower on the right side of the aisle, but there is progress. The bottom line is that in the near future, Trump and the GOP, will meet their Waterloo. This is when reality will really set in for them and their base.

Most of America is partially solemn these days with legitimate concerns for household budgets, a functioning government and the loss of their constitutional rights. Mostly, no one seems to know when or if all of the administration’s chaos and fascist behavior will end, or that we can all begin affording our lives again. All of us who don’t vote Republican, have understood this reality since Trump’s first administration, 2017-2021. In the interim, we’ve weathered a global pandemic, made exponentially worse by the Trump administration’s corruption and criminal negligence, multiple global wars, a hollowed out economy and a fascist administration brutalizing the American people. And this is just the short list. America has murdered hundreds of thousands due to the sudden, illegal cessation of USAID programs and continues to strip us of our healthcare and subject us to the insanity of RFK Jr’s decisions about the health of the nation. That is reality, not what spews from the right side of the aisle.

Inflation is perpetually rising while wages are declining relative to the cost of living. Even the normally stable US bond market is alarmed at where the US economy is heading. Our national security is also hollowed out by purges, unconstitutional global aggression and Pete Hegseth’s personal racism and misogynism. The US Treasury is being emptied by GOP corruption in congress while GOP congressmen, stridently protect pedophiles. This is not America.

A brilliant young American Writer who we lost to mental health issues in 2008, authored the quote below. If I was a Republican, I’d heed David Foster Wallace’s warning. All of the truths being withheld from the American people throughout this administration will come to light in the future, and all non-republicans are in the mood for some serious accountability. When this is all over… and it will be, accountability will fall hard on GOP elected officials, from the local level to the very top. This reality is already setting in for GOP voters. As much as we love our MAGA GOP family, friends and co-workers, the situation has gone too far for us to stay silent in the face of the GOP’s alternative realities.

If those true Republicans wish to continue living in a universe that is fully delusional, we are no longer obligated to patiently go along them. If this causes unrest, so be it. Our mission now is simple; we must do three things, 1. stop the madness by voting for the resistance in November, 2. rebuild our republic so that it mirrors America’s true values, and 3. protects us from ever experiencing any such era again. Accountability is step one. GOP be warned.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”

 David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996).

All of us in the resistance who’ve lived through this Trump/ MAGA era have had enough, and any sane national security risk analyst will tell you that the risk to our republic is not only real, but acute across the full-spectrum of potential threats. The risks we face here in the states are also enabling other similar authoritarian governments like Russia, China, Argentina, Iran, N. Korea etc., to run roughshod over half the world by using the exact same playbook as this administration. After a long career in US and allied national security, I can assure you that every single one of our US allies or global friends, now see the US as an authoritarian threat that specializes in violence and kleptocracy.

"In a law-abiding administration, personal finances wouldn’t be an important part of the public debate. But this administration’s leaders have decided that laws and norms of behavior that have held for a century or more don’t apply to them. The Republican-led Congress has so far decided not to enforce them either. It’s now up to the media, to outside organizations, and to whistleblowers to keep reporting the slide into kleptocracy to the public and to the courts, to make sure that remaining laws are enforced."

- Kleptocracy, Inc.
- The Atlantic
- Anne Applebaum
- April 14, 2025

It is not just the administration and the Republican politicians either. US and some other western media, have sold their spine to the administration, and refuse to report on them as they would any other administration. Some of this is the administration’s extortion of networks but overall, it’s just plain cowardice from network owners. Government databases are no longer available for the simplest of things and even when they are, we’ve lost faith in any announcement from this administration or GOP-led Congress. The Republicans are doing so terribly, that they are coercing networks like ABC and CBS to either not report on news, or to lie about the reporting to make the administration not appear so corrupt and incompetent. Yes, we aren’t only being lied to, but are being kept in the dark intentionally. Sometimes I wonder if ethics are still taught in journalism. Ethical journalism as the Fourth Estate, is an imperative to American Democracy.

"The Trump administration came into office promising to end federal censorship and government weaponization. Its Jan. 20, 2025 executive orders framed the prior administration’s pressure on social-media platforms as intolerable interference with the marketplace of ideas. But rather than abandon coercion as a tool of speech policy, the administration has redirected it through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The targets are the intermediaries that structure modern speech markets: social-media platforms, advertisers, fact-checkers, broadcasters, and payment networks. Many of these intermediaries are multisided platforms, meaning pressure applied to one side can reshape incentives across the whole ecosystem. Government officials can therefore influence speech indirectly by targeting advertisers, banks, broadcast affiliates, or evaluators of online content rather than speakers themselves. That is the danger of censorship-by-proxy."

- Censorship-by-Proxy: Jawboning in the Marketplace of Ideas
- International Center for Law & Economics
- Ben Sperry
- May 8, 2026

For those of us not blinded by influence campaigns being run by the GOP with Russian assistance for the past couple of decades, we are not deluded by the conspiracy theories, outright lies and omissions that serve as news for Republicans. You and I live in the reality that our family and friends have imposed onto all of us with their vote and right now, that reality is as abusive and un-American as it gets. Republicans are now being abused like the rest of us, and this is why our reality is becoming theirs as well. Nearly as many Republicans depend on social safety net programs as the left. Those GOP voters are finally getting it through their thick heads that they were conned, and that their party doesn’t give a damn about them. Welcome these folks back into our herd if you get the chance. Every vote will count come this November.

Even though that many Republicans are beginning to understand our long-held convictions about them and their party, I will introduce a fact into our reality that plays a role in November. During all my years in CT or Counterterrorism, I have had the opportunity to review a great many de-radicalization or countering violent extremism programs and to be frank, the success rate for rehabilitating fully committed extremists and violent extremists, is absurdly low. Once someone’s identity has been so completely brainwashed that they will act on their extremist beliefs publicly, their recovery chances are slim or none. Those believing in and acting on conspiracy theories and radical ideology publicly, like Project 2025, are by definition extremists attempting to overthrow our constitutional republic. Those involved in the January 6th, armed insurrection, are violent extremists with the same goal and their loyalty to Trump and the GOP brand, are inseparable.

There is no chance that the administration or the GOP will change their ways in a positive manner before the midterms. This is reality. They will also continue to deny us news about what’s going on in America or around the world. The war in Iran and the Persian Gulf attest to this fact. We have little to no idea what is occurring there because between the administration and their co-conspirators who own networks, there is an informal censorship. As one who reads history and has participated in a couple of wars, I find the reporting on the Iran War abysmal. Stories are suppressed, facts are altered, press briefings are for cheerleading the administration, not disseminating credible information. The Trump administration even went so far as to demand that satellite owners not allow any video or images about the war, to be transmitted to the US. Censorship takes on many forms and this government is employing all of them.

Between the brainwashing of GOP voters and the administration’s censorship, acquiring high-quality news in the US during the Trump era, is far more challenging than at any other time in US history other than the Yellow Journalism Era. It’s no wonder that Republican reality is grounded in the fairy tales and conspiracy theories marketed by liars, conmen (and women) and traitors. Here’s the critical point regarding the brainwashing and censorship; roughly 70% of America is not brainwashed. We must encourage empathetic voters to venture from their sofa and cast their ballot for reality, not the cartoonishly ridiculous lies that are the trademark of today’s GOP and the White House.

Like any other problem that we face in our lives, we must make decisions based on the best information at the time. When we are deprived of credible information or information at all, our opportunities to make informed decisions evaporate as fast as water on a Palm Springs pool deck. Reality is truth. Republicans and the White House are the ones depriving voters of the information required to make the hard decisions we must make, in order to repair the massive scale of damage done to our republic, and its citizens. One aspect of reality that a large component of the Republican voting bloc ignores, is how angry and frustrated we are that we must endure our current disastrous upheaval. As much as I hold my GOP voting family and friends dear, I resent the fact that I must now be the one to stop the insanity of listening to their dangerously aberrant ideology out of politeness. I for one, cannot allow myself to protect their feelings from reality.

I have intentionally made this first essay back a somewhat shorter endeavor. I simply wish to make the point that, we cannot wish away reality. We’re in a helluva jam and the only way out is to return to a point where newsrooms aren’t cowardly and that Republican voters, stop ignoring their shrinking balances in their checkbook, the Iran war on for oil, that America’s racists are now running the very nation secured by the blood of a myriad of all faiths, religions, ethnicities, races etc., and that 70% of the nation is angry with their willful ignorance. While raising my children, there were times when I didn’t much care for their behavior but the one thing that was never in doubt, was that I loved them unconditionally. They grew up into remarkable adults, one and all, and I’m beyond grateful for the wonderful warm relationships we have.

Like my children, we can continue to love our family friends too, even when we don’t very much like them. The relationships may be a bit rough for a while, but we can heal as a nation so long as we all have the courage to operate on truth… and after we get our country back under control. In the meantime, we must find a way to reacquaint those we care about with reality. If not, it’s up to us to find those independent voters and help them understand that apathy is the equivalent of defeat. It is fitting that I close this essay with another quote from David Foster Wallace, that speaks to this point far more eloquently than I do.

"In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote."

- David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

My very best for your weekend and, keep the faith.

Paul

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TAT readers,

Well my friends, the administration has apparently never learned the old rule that says, “when you’re in a hole you can’t get out of, rule #1 is to stop digging. Sure, it’s common sense as well, but common sense is on the endangered species list in this administration. The Iran War is such a hole and the administration just can’t stop digging. Barring any significant change to the status quo, Iran has no compelling reason to change either her position or her strategy regarding the Strait of Hormuz and related issues. Iran holds nearly all of the cards in the on again-off again negotiations with US representatives, a position Iran made clear this week when publicly issuing her demands to be met by the US, prior to restarting peace negotiations. Those demands are in the quote below.

"Trump's remarks came after Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, the outgoing secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on Saturday listed six demands that the U.S. would need to meet before Tehran will allow the free-flow of naval navigation in the trade passage.

“Until America corrects its behavior, the Strait of Hormuz will not open,” Zolqadr declared, in a statement carried by state media.

The conditions were as follows:

- Never threaten Iran with any language or insult the sanctities of this nation.

- End the war and aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq forever.

- Lift the naval blockade and withdraw its military forces (naval and air) from around Iran.

- Pay the damages of the two wars of aggression and imposition on Iran without any reduction or reduction.

- Lift the cruel and illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation.

- Unconditionally release the frozen and stolen assets of the Iranian people."

- Trump Responds as Iran Says U.S. Must Meet These Six Demands If Strait of Hormuz Is to Reopen
- Time Magazine
- by Tiago Ventura
- Updated: Aug 10, 2026 2:38 PM ET

Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr’s comments and demands were the diplomatic equivalent of being gestured at rudely with a select, single digit. In the meantime, the whole world is watching as Iranian hardliners turn the screws on our clownish and obviously impotent administration of losers. Trump and the GOP’s backs are against the wall with November midterms right around the corner and they are clueless as how to relieve the financial pressure on voters caused by their latest war for oil. The war, its casualties and costs are deeply unpopular in both domestic US political parties, and around the world. In less than two years, Trump and his GOP entourage have nearly shutdown two of the world’s most critical commercial waterways, and haven’t a clue what to do about it. The world is watching and they are not happy.

Here in the US, inflation costs or what most are now calling “Trump’s affordability crisis,” are costing families at least an extra $3,500 a year with no hope of improvement. Millions have lost healthcare in 2026 while that 70% of America struggles with their household budget, and the Iran War is one of the primary drivers of these added financial burdens. Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait (the southern entrance to the Suez Canal) due to the war are deeply impacting shipping, including fuel. Higher fuel costs means higher shipping costs. Higher shipping costs mean higher costs for all products and services. That means the prices at your local supermarket will cost more too, and will continue to do so until there is a sustainable solution to Iran. There is no solution in sight.

For those interested in the relevant data about the depth and breadth of our affordability crisis, please see the link beneath the graphic below from the Urban Institute. When clicking on any of the interactive graphics below, you will be directed to the supporting information for their findings. The research doesn’t tell a pretty story but it is an essential story for each and every voter to understand. Spoiler alert… Both Trump administrations have been very hard on our wallets.

Fifty-five percent of all global manufacturing is in Asia. Everything we purchase in the US manufactured in Asia now costs more. Mexico and Canada are our biggest trading partners and both are targets of what the Wall Street Journal calls, the Trump tariff obsession. Just recently, he burdened both with new tariffs that you and I will pay for. In other words, inflation cannot go down so long as tariffs and the Iran War’s inflationary factors don’t improve. These improvements are nowhere in sight either. GOP politicians can promise to fix inflation all they like but unless the underlying factors like closed waterways and tariffs don’t change, inflation won’t change.

On the global front, China continues to be the big winner in this Iran War fiasco. The longer the war, the more extensive the damage to the image of the US as a superpower of consequence. Our ongoing abdication from global alliances and institutions simply reinforces Xi’s message to the world; “China is the safe, stable partner and the US is the selfish disruptor.” Much of the world already believes this, especially after Americans elected Trump a second time. Part of US national security is based on being us being a force for good in the world that is also a reliable ally and good neighbor. This gives us the security of the herd. Neither of these things are true any longer. If China develops more influence in the world than the US, we lose the security of the global herd.

As has been Xi’s strategy since taking power, mediating conflicts has been a key component of ingratiating himself and China with nations around the world, for the purpose of influencing them to favor China over the US and other western nations. In fact, last May, China launched the International Organization for Mediation (IOMed), a new international organization focused on international dispute mediation. The message the world is hearing at the moment, is that the US is the global disruptor and China is the global unifier.

Mediation and global engagement have been keen and somewhat effective elements of his China Dream strategy, built onto the back of his BRI or Belt and Road Initiative. Note that the China Dream strategy has two milestones, regional hegemony for China by 2035 and global by 2049. Of course Xi isn’t the best partner, but China’s stability is definitely more attractive to other nations when the US is behaving like the proverbial, “bull-in-a-China-Shop.” The worse our behavior, the less influence we have with other nations. Friendless and ignored is a vulnerable position to be in when it comes to geo-politics.

Now we find ourselves in an awkward stalemate with Iran. With the cost of the war pickpocketing American wallets, our diminished position of influence in the world and with not one single exit strategy on the horizon, the situation comes down to Trump desperately trying to find a way out of the disaster he created, while that Iran broadcasts our military and diplomatic impotence to the entire world. The problem for the American people and the rest of the world, is finding a way to end the stalemate before any further damage can be done to our economy and our fleeting national security posture. Based on Iran’s demands this week, they are prepared to wait out these alleged negotiations… until well after the midterms. The question then becomes; “can the US and global economies continue limping along for another 3 months until the midterms, with 20% less energy to drive industry?”

Iran is less vulnerable to prolonging negotiations so long as Xi continues providing support. Both Russia and China have assisted Iran in targeting US troops and facilities in allied nations along the western side of the Persian Gulf, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan and Oman. So long as Iran can keep a knife at the throat of one-fifth of the world’s oil supply and hold it hostage, Iran can call the shots and short of a full-scale ground war, there’s not much we can do about it. This is where we are today. Meanwhile at home, the war’s extreme unpopularity and massive cost, is raising alarms within the GOP about their chances in the midterm elections.

And then at the end of July, Iran launched cyberattacks against water facilities in the US in six states. These cyber attacks are a message to the US, if you attack our infrastructure, we’ll attack yours too. This is in reference to Trump’s repeated threats to destroy Iranian infrastructure that supports the civilian population. This would be a war crime. Terrorism threats here in the US are also now elevated due to the war. Slowly, the war is coming home to America, along with the higher prices.

We may as well get used to this on again-off again war, that as I recall… still does not have the approval of congress. American casualties are increasing and the price tag for this war is climbing faster than Trump’s ego when being fawned over by his cadre of wealthy sycophants. Our inability to bring the Iran war to a successful end continues to diminish our stature as a primary superpower. In fact, I could make a good argument that the US is no longer the world’s primary power. Our demonstrable poor strategic judgement, depleted munitions stockpiles and failed campaigns against Iran, have made us appear vulnerable to our adversaries, especially if they were close strategic partners such as China and Russia are.

As we careen downhill towards the midterms, the Iran War will seem to drag on endlessly. We no longer have the diplomatic clout, or sufficient munitions to bring the war to a successful conclusion at this time. We are largely devoid of leverage over Iran due to China’s backing and having the entire world breathing down our back because of the significant disruption to global industry and commerce. Iran seems to be managing Trump’s sanctions and regime change doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Barring any major unforeseen events or changes, I’d say that Iran can continue to humiliate the Trump administration and us by proxy, for a long while.

I wish this essay could bring you more hopeful news, but we remain saddled with an administration and governing party that don’t give a damn about you, or me, or the American people. The forecast calls for more Iran war pain, at least until the midterms. Should anything significant change, I’ll be back with an update. Until then, settle in for at least another few months of pain. With any luck, this ship of fools called the Trump administration, won’t make things even worse with another of their hair-brained ideas.

My very best to all,

Paul

Parts 1-10 in this series are below:

1. Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

2. Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

3. Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

4. Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

5. Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

6. Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

7. Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

8. The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

9. Part IX, the Iran War: Hold your horses everyone, a yet unsigned MOU is not a peace deal

10. Part X, the Iran War; The "peace deal" that wasn't.

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How Tehran’s Use of Cyber Operations in the U.S.-Iran Conflict Has Evolved

The Iran Conflict | Ipsos

Iran war reverberations: A nadir for Asia’s economic security | Brookings

America’s Affordability Crisis Is About More Than Rising Costs | Urban Institute

Latest Analysis: War with Iran | CSIS

TAT readers,

As always, there are plenty of issues to be outraged over so long as this administration and their party hold power within our government, but today, this is personal. Some of the things happening in and around the Pentagon these days that don’t get big headlines, are revolting. Today, I’ll vent a bit of my deep frustration about one of those less visible transgressions, but mostly around the immigration issues for servicemembers and veterans, along with their families. How is it that a nation of immigrants that is protected by a military that is 98.3 % immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, can abuse immigrants currently serving on active duty and their families?

While mining this morning’s news for a topic today, I came across an “Exclusive” from the AP/ Associated Press titled; 50-plus military spouses, parents detained in immigration crackdown. As a retired soldier, I felt deep shame and disgust while poring over the details in their “exclusive.” ICE rounding up family members of serving US servicemembers for removal, strikes at the very heart of what service to our nation of immigrants means. Abusing the families of these warriors denigrates the very cause those warriors serve, and violates the constitution they have sworn to protect with their lives, if need be. As we have come to expect from this administration, they refused comment when queried by the AP for comment on this story.

Like all other federal agencies in this administration, queries to DHS, ICE, CBP etc., go unanswered. We no longer receive the information from our government that we have traditionally had access to. Even when we do, it is often false when fact checked or a conspiracy theory that is offered as truth. This is no way to run a government that as President Lincoln so eloquently stated in his iconic Gettysburg Address, is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

"President Donald Trump’s administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families to pursue its mass deportation agenda, an Associated Press investigation found.

More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Trump took office for a second term, and at least six have been deported and one self-deported, the AP found in the first accounting of such detentions, which the government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of U.S. service members remain in federal immigration custody."

- AP Exclusive: Trump’s immigration crackdown has detained more than 50 military spouses and parents
- Associated Press
- By  JACK BROOK, SAFIYAH RIDDLE and AARON KESSLER
- Updated 11:40 AM EDT, August 5, 2026

To illustrate the evil of this removal effort, allow me to explain that the military already had made commitments to family members of troops that are not citizens but are legal residents, to “parole-in-place.”

"One of the military’s most highly advertised immigration benefits is “military parole-in-place,” which allows the spouses, children and parents of active-duty service members and veterans to obtain legal immigration status from within the country. Not everyone qualifies: Those who overstayed visas or who already applied for legal status at the border, for example.

The policy was implemented under Republican President George W. Bush during the U.S. war with Iraq in 2007 and codified under Democratic President Barack Obama. DHS agencies can grant it on a case-by-case basis."

- AP Exclusive: Trump’s immigration crackdown has detained more than 50 military spouses and parents
- Associated Press
- By  JACK BROOK, SAFIYAH RIDDLE and AARON KESSLER
- Updated 11:40 AM EDT, August 5, 2026

The Pentagon even used Parole-in-Place or PIP as a recruiting tool to boost our flagging recruiting goals.

"In recent years, federal immigration authorities took military service into consideration when deciding whether to enforce deportations or detainment against immigrant troops, veterans and their families. But the attorneys said that deference to service has now either stopped or isn't clearly being taken into consideration.

ICE referred Military.com to the Department of Homeland Security when asked late last month whether it considers military service when enforcing deportation. DHS did not reply by publication.

"They're no longer exercising discretion in favor of military members and their families," Stock said. "It creates an irreconcilable conflict for the military member, and it cuts against the message the military likes to put out that we take care of people, that we don't hurt family members and military members."

"We've stopped taking care of people," she added."

- Marine Recruiters Promoted an Immigration Benefit Until the Corps Told Them to Stop
- Military Times
- Drew F. Lawrence
- July 9th, 2025

In today’s military, whether on base or within the surrounding communities, there is a fair amount of chaos due to the endless administration shakeups in everything from combat operations to base closures and mass job-loss due to federal firings. This increases the stress on everyone from troops to federal employees and defense contractors. Surrounding communities are feeling the stress as well, especially after all of the job losses cut into their customer base. I have family members and friends, often retired military who work in government, who are perpetually stressed by the chaos of this administration. Many family members of troops live on and often work on bases, therefore contributing to the well-being of their families and other servicemembers. Add to this, the stress of worrying about family members being pursued by ICE despite the Parole-in-Place program, and we have servicemembers who struggle to focus on their missions.

If our nation of immigrants desires citizens who are willing to serve their nation on the battlefield, we have an obligation to not abuse their families. The PIP plan was advertised as a benefit to attract new recruits and now, we are not only reneging on our word, we are deporting family members who are part of the support system for our warfighters. Adding salt to the wound, the administration is now also deporting non-citizen, active-duty servicemembers. This is particularly egregious to me as that my first wife served in my unit in the US army with only a green card. Years after leaving the army, she became a naturalized citizen.

This is but one more of the countless examples of how the Republican Party’s support for the military is more myth than substance. They continue to attempt to steal our VA benefits, side with our adversaries, fire our finest generals and admirals, send us on wars of empire for oil companies, fail to protect us at war and waste our hard-earned tax-dollars giving obnoxiously marked up and no-bid contracts to their defense contractor buddies, rather than investing in our troop’s well-being. The final insult is that our so-called Commander-in-Chief, sees us as “losers and suckers.”

The Secretary of Defense shoves his White Christian Nationalist agenda down the throats of our servicemembers, and orders war crimes, but these are not his most destructive traits. Pete’s racist misogynism is undercutting and destroying the very traditions and social innovations that have sustained and transformed the US military into the world’s finest. It was the Pentagon that led on desegregation, waded into gender issues in search of working solutions and pushed hard to educate based on aptitude, not other factors. Then Pete Hegseth came along and began whitewashing our honored history and traditions, by removing the accomplishments of all non-white, non-straight, non-male leaders, icons, heroes etc. This turned my stomach. It’s disingenuous to say that, “all men are created equal,” if only white males count.

My friends, it is beyond painful for veterans who’ve honorably upheld their sacred oath to, “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic,'“ to witness the administration’s use and abuse of our military. The Pentagon may not always get it right, but overall it has been our reliable insurance policy against tyranny for 250 years. This happened because ideas and adherence to ideals meant something in pre-Trump and MAGA America. America is not her military, land, money, weapons nor any other tangible thing. America is an idea, a dream and a spirit that Pete and his cronies believe they can erase by rewriting our history, abusing our non-white, non-male servicemembers and their families, marginalizing our traditions and shouting us down. He’s wrong and he and his kind, will never understand why. They simply don’t understand that you cannot kill a spirit, especially not a free American spirit.

I’ll begin wrapping this slightly meandering essay by making it clear that I support our troops with as much diligence as I despise this administration and Pete Hegseth for what they are doing to our national security and our troops. As a reminder to those dense Republicans out there, our national security depends on troops believing in what they fight for. Dying so that Chevron, ExxonMobil and the rest could have higher profits next quarter, is not what they signed up to fight for. Pete’s MAGA policies at DoD along with largescale DOGE firings undermined morale, readiness and logistics prior to the administration’s military adventurism around the world.

All of this created additional nightmares after the war with Iran began. The lack of cohesion, failed planning, lack of coordination took its toll. We could begin our war but could not sustain it. We knew this or at least should have known this from the beginning. Our ongoing depleted missile stockpile crisis is clear evidence of failed administration leadership. This crisis alone makes us far weaker should China or any other military crisis arise in the near future. To make matters worse, we don’t even have enough left in our stockpiles to finish the job against Iran, whatever that would look like. Those familiar with military planning are shaking their heads right now and asking themselves, “who in the hell planned Operation Epic Fury?”

Whether it is incompetence on a grand scale, far-right political ideology, massive corruption or any other factor, the jury is in and Pete Hegseth has failed on a global scale. Nations like China now no longer sees us with an invincible military adversary. Our allies doubt us and keep us at arms length, we are incapable of supplying enough munitions to fight a regional war, we are now largely a pariah nation due to tariffs and aggression and we are not taking care of our military. If this isn’t a recipe for disaster, nothing is.

I do appreciate your patience while that I meandered between different topics but all related to the Pentagon and our national security. I hope these thoughts help to fill in some of the blanks between the stories we do see in our headlines.

My very best for your weekend,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is a sobering discussion about the precipitous state of America’s national security posture. It has been willfully degraded since Inauguration Day, but since the Iran War’s first salvos, our inability to protect the nation from a variety of threats, has grown sharply. The willful degradation of our national security should concern every American. National security professionals have been writing about this whittling away of our national security since before inauguration day, 2025. In my opinion, we’ve reached a point of vulnerability nationally, that requires all Americans to acknowledge the threat and act to stop any further damage.

Today’s essay is less a well-organized assessment, than me brainstorming out loud an array of thoughts about our national security that don’t seem to make it to our mainstream news headlines. To be clear, far more goes into national security than just troops, planes, ships, intelligence etc. A true-in-depth and detailed analysis would require volumes to explain the severity of our current vulnerabilities, but today’s cursory look should alarm you enough without overloading you with massive amounts of data from every nook and cranny of our national security budget. Today I am only looking at what I consider to be a few of the most dangerous indicators and issues of our national security readiness.

A nation’s defense depends on a wide variety of factors but they are not all equal. In fact, every nation looks to their own security and much of their decision-making, which is based on their potential adversaries or as is common in much natsec planning these days, “competitors.” Every new administration puts out a document called the NSS or National Security Strategy early in their term. The NSS outlines where the incoming administration sees the most significant threats to our nation and how they intend to go about addressing them. Our most recent NSS is the November 2025 version from the current Trump administration.

I am far from the only national security professional to pan the 2025 NSS. Most serious think tanks find this version to be a strong deviation from everything America has always considered critical to our national security. High profile think tanks tend to carefully couch their criticisms of any administration in euphemisms, so as to not offend whichever political party is in power. Those who have read their reports for years as I have, will immediately recognize a harsher or maybe blunter tone of criticism of this administration. This is an indicator of a highly-stressed national security environment.

Below are a handful of highly respected sources echoing many of my concerns.

• A Strategy That Ignores the Real Threats - The Atlantic

• The New US National Security Strategy: A Transactional Document that Marginalizes Africa - Foreign Policy Research Institute

• Experts react: What Trump’s National Security Strategy means for US foreign policy - Atlantic Council

• Breaking down Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy | Brookings

• The New US National Security Strategy: A Transactional Document that Marginalizes Africa - Foreign Policy Research Institute

My most prescient threat

"One of the most dramatic geopolitical developments in recent years has been the growing alignment among America’s adversaries and competitors. China is helping Russia reconstitute its military, and in exchange, Russia is providing China with valuable military technology and assistance that could give it an edge over the United States in a conflict. North Korea has sent troops and weapons to Russia in its war against Ukraine, and in exchange, Moscow has helped Pyongyang modernize its military. All of these countries and Iran are cooperating diplomatically against the United States. If a U.S.-China war were to break out, it could easily go global, given these links. Reading the NSS, you’d never know about any of this."

- A Strategy That Ignores the Real Threats
- The Atlantic
- Thomas Wright
- December 8th, 2026

Americans and others are dying, while thousands have become causalities in and around the Iran War. It hasn’t stopped there either. In Trump’s second term, we’ve bombed seven different countries, more than any other president in the modern era. For a guy elected to our highest office by promising to end wars, provide peace deals within 24 hours of being elected and prevent future wars, it’s quite clear that Trump and the GOP who has given him free rein to wage his wars, are abject failures at peace. To make matters even worse, we are less safe, not more after all of these global attacks. I explained this issue in detail in a couple of the essays I wrote for a ten-part series on the early part of the Iran war.

1. Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

2. Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

3. Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

4. Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

5. Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

6. Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

7. Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

8. The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

9. Part IX, the Iran War: Hold your horses everyone, a yet unsigned MOU is not a peace deal

10. Part X, the Iran War; The "peace deal" that wasn't.

All of this military activity takes a toll on troops, equipment, R&D (research and development), morale and sustainability. The US lagging behind in all of these issues and more. For example, for decades, the building and sustaining of our national security has required the ability of the US to fight two, full-scale wars simultaneously. By no stretch of the imagination is that now currently possible. Iran is not even a full-scale war and yet, we’ve critically depleted much of our entire specialty missile and related munitions stockpiles, having borrowed many of the munitions used against Iran from other global commands. Most of those stockpiles cannot be fully replenished until sometime in 2027 at best, and some of the most important ones far later. Should China decide to fight over Taiwan, we’d be in an extremely weak position due to our depleted stockpiles.

It’s not like we entered into this war ready for another war either. The Pentagon has been struggling to maintain readiness for over a decade due to two decades of war in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan. We haven’t yet determined a strategy for modernizing and refitting the Pentagon for the rapidly evolving combat environments we see globally. In other words, this is a poor time to start wars around the globe for which we are not prepared. Again I remind readers, our ongoing abuses of our allies, especially NATO, makes our current degraded national security posture, even more pronounced. Such a situation is much like how predators select prey on the savannahs of Africa. They look for the weakened, slow, injured animals without allies on the edge of the herd, as their dinner.

It is not only the munitions stockpiles we’re burning so carelessly, but the Pentagon’s already bloated budget has now faltered under the weight of the absurdly unnecessary war with Iran. Pete Hegseth is now begging Congress for another 70 billion for his losing war. America can ill afford the losses we are suffering, especially regarding the 2.6 billion dollars worth of aircraft lost to Iran. Such losses put a huge dent in our sustainability goals to maintain a force that is fully equipped, trained and operationally competent to protect our nation. As of yesterday, this administration cannot even determine the number of deaths and other casualties. No one in their right mind believes Hegseth’s claim that we’ve only spent 37 billion on the war so far. Honest experts put the number at roughly 90 billion. Despite a 1.5 Trillion dollar budget, Pete is now asking the overwhelming majority of Americans who don’t see any point to this war, to pay another 70 billion.

One aspect of national security that doesn’t get near enough attention is morale. Troops must always know what they are fighting for, believe in the mission, know that they will not be ordered to commit illegal acts etc. Absence of this understanding or not being supportive of current policies can be debilitating for military forces. We saw this often in troops mobilized to go to walk around D.C. or the streets of LA during early administration immigration actions. We’re seeing it again from US casualties in and around the Persian Gulf who were ordered to operate without the necessary layered protections from Iranian missile and drone attacks. There is always some level of morale problems within the force but today’s malaise is universal.

In fact, the US military talks to its troops a great deal about something called “the will to fight.”

"In 2018, RAND published two reports for the U.S. Army describing will to fight. Arguably, will to fight is the single most important factor in war. Will to fight is the disposition and decision to fight, to keep fighting, and to win. The best technology in the world is useless without the force of will to use it and to keep using it even as casualties mount and unexpected calamities arise. Will to fight represents the indelibly human nature of warfare."

- Will to Fight
- RAND
- Ben Connable, Michael J. McNerney, William Marcellino, Aaron B. Frank, Henry Hargrove, Marek N. Posard, S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Natasha Lander, Jasen J. Castillo, James Sladden, et al.
- September 13, 2019

A dangerous hollowing-out of senior officers based on race, gender or policy opinions has taken a toll, especially on the officer corps. Some commands operate like Soviet troops did, with political and religious Kommissars. The recent forced retirement of GEN. Christopher Donahue, commander of all US forces Europe and Africa, stunned all senior leadership. GEN. Donahue was generational leader that I once had the humbling honor to serve under. Seeing him being shown the door was a shock wave of proportion all across the Department of Defense.

When one looks at some of the other facets of national security like allies, friends, a strong economy, manufacturing, a unified citizenry, diplomacy etc., it is easy to see that even outside of the Pentagon, our national security posture is at its weakest since just prior to WW II. Manufacturing still trends towards sending manufacturing overseas, our economy for oligarchs only is spiraling downward before our very eyes, our citizenry is highly divided and not one agency within the federal government is running anywhere close to “smooth.” America is nowhere near prepared to defend itself.

I have even mused here in writing, that in some ways, China has replaced the US as the world’s most dominant superpower. The longer this fiasco in the Persian Gulf drags on, the stronger China becomes and the weaker we look. The stronger Xi becomes, the weaker we become. Not even US military strength can protect us if a China dominated world becomes a reality. For the record, Xi’s 2012 China Dream Strategy which calls for Chinese regional hegemony by 2035 and global hegemony by 2049, is right on schedule. We cannot go it alone in today’s world. No nation can. The smart play is to stop abusing our allies and try to win back a little of the trust we so callously destroyed. Without a competent corps of Ambassadors, which we don’t have, we cannot restore trust with allies via standard diplomatic norms. Not only have we shot ourselves in the foot, but we’ve used a cannon to do it. In the modern world, those without allies formal or otherwise are nothing more than prey. For example, just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration, he ordered all cyber and influence operations against Russia halted. Now Russia attacks us constantly and we’ve made it far-easier for them.

Our primary threats are not just overseas either. Terrorism from across the ideological spectrum threatens citizens, with far-right violent extremism continuing their twenty-plus years spree that accounts for the majority of the violence. Cost of living challenges for citizens continue to mount, diseases once eradicated have reappeared, our civil rights are disappearing and the overwhelming majority of Americans, deservedly no longer trust their government. In fact, my professional opinion is that miss and disinformation have turned our media environment septic. The government not only refuses to help, but doesn’t know how even if they tried.

Summary

I am appreciative for those who’ve taken the time to read my thoughts on some aspects of our national security vulnerabilities that don’t make the headlines. To be blunt, I no longer am confident that the US is still the primary global power. China has a far-better diplomatic and commercial network that links them to nearly every corner of the world. Their military is growing as rapidly as it is modernizing. Tariffs, diplomatic abuses, refusal to cooperate, are just some of tools that we use to force ourselves and our allies into retreat.

Debacles of the Iran War demonstrate not only failed leadership from the administration, but that we are a bull-in-a-China-shop when it comes to the global economy. Being unpopular around the world is one thing, but being a selfish international agitator when it comes to the global economy only further isolates the US from the safety of our existing military and trade alliances.

Without firm intervention by congress that restores professionalism to our national security community, America will become critically vulnerable on the world stage and with a sharply reduced voice in global affairs. Are we really willing to surrender our future to oppressive oligarchy that leaves us less safe than at any other moment in my lifetime? The only way we can stop the bleeding from the deep wounds in our national security, is to take it to the press and to congress relentlessly. We can sort out our intra-American partisan battlefield later but at the moment, our national security is in the ICU, and the patient is coding.

My very best for your week,

Paul

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TAT readers,

As I mentioned in my last essay, I’m in that part of the summer where opportunities to share time with family and friends are more frequent, and a welcome distraction from my normal routines. In other words, thank you for your patience with my less-frequent essays. One of my favorite parts to this time of the year is that those I spend time with, are spread all across this fine nation and in many cases, the world. Spending time with loved ones in their part of the country, also means an opportunity to “take the pulse” of Americans of all types and interests. By the end of the summer, I will have seen the country from top to bottom and east to west. To date, that pulse has been fairly uniform regardless of whether I’m in a so-called “red state” or “blue.” I will give you the next paragraph as an over-simplified overview of what I’m finding.

America is exhausted, humiliated globally and domestically, buckling under the weight of job uncertainty, inflation, diminishing benefits, healthcare costs and even wonders whether or not the American Dream still exists. In many places I’ve traveled so far, there is a sense that America is on some sort of melancholic “autopilot” and therefore directionless. If true it is the type of apathy that can destroy democratic institutions, even those with 250 years of success. There is also that nagging, budding trend of rejecting politics and political parties altogether. This brings new urgency to the now accepted fact, that the American political system is by all measurable standards, on life-support as a functioning constitutional republic.

Right now, we need a citizenry that is courageously willing to see the faults in our political system clearly enough, to implement the common-sense safeguards required to protect all of our rapidly diminishing, constitutionally guaranteed rights. All across America, I hear from people from all political disciplines that clearly see the faults in our system and the answers to fixing those faults. In many ways, we as a nation overthink some of the simplest concepts. For example and as it pertains to this essay, most Americans dislike the idea of big money in politics, that the news is no longer trustworthy, that politicians regularly lie to them, etc., etc., etc. For the record, these issues and those like them are points of interest for both sides of the so-called aisle. Anywhere our nation can find commonality these days, is a good thing.

The most prominent trends I’m finding in my travels, revolve around the issue of affordability. Wherever I travel, Americans are working more hours, extra jobs and shopping more carefully. The sad part of this trend is revealed when chatting with these folks, as that none of them see better days ahead. This may just be my anecdotal reporting but it’s also part of my profession to watch, hear and understand people, or as many would say, “to read them.” America is beginning to be seriously concerned about being able to afford their lives in the future. Another unifying issue between left and right, is that both sides are beginning to see that the real issue for November’s midterms, is that the elite wealth class, is keeping them in servitude and that politicians are merely the facilitators of those shackles. If those in the resistance can keep the right focused on how the billionaire-classes propping up the administration are the ones negatively impacting their lives, allies could be acquired from the right, rather than further entrenching the MAGA crowd against us.

The great irony of our current, hyper-partisan political landscape is that the things that really matter to both sides should unify us, not separate. Jobs, a place to live, security, equality, healthcare, a fair legal system etc., are things we all want and yet, we allow politicians to pit us against each other for their benefit, not ours. Culture wars are merely diversions from other truths that we can all agree on. So long as we allow them to do this, they will continue making deals in congress that they benefit from, not us, the people they work for. The price of this type of accountability, is the education of citizens in how government works, their duty to participate in accurately and well-informed elections, how to hold elected officials accountable etc. All democracy is a team-sport and requires participation. A government, “Of the people, by the people, for the people”, is only as good as those which we advance from the ranks to lead.

From the overview above, there are a couple of issues that I recommend following closely as we careen downhill towards the midterms. First and foremost, inflation cannot improve so long as the Iran War continues. It is really is that simple. So long as the Strait of Hormuz is closed, fuel prices will remain high or grow even higher. All products must be shipped to market. Higher fuel costs equals higher costs for your household. This isn’t rocket science. Even if the Strait opened tomorrow, most fossil fuel experts believe that it would take another year for things to return to pre-war levels. There will be no real relief and especially not before election day. There are no narratives more dangerous to GOP candidates in November, than this economy that is utterly failing working Americans.

Secondly, The Iran War which was lost from the very first hour, is sucking the life out of our economy. All the administration is doing now is enhancing China’s influence in the region. Continuing to act as if we were going to invade Iran or that we can win the war via the air, just makes us more of a laughing stock. An invasion would be in clinical terms, “nuts.” We continue to deplete valuable stockpiles of weapons required to defend Taiwan or take other decisive military action anywhere else in the world. After the lack of planning and execution against Iran and the Houthis, the US military is beginning to be seen as far less intimidating than believed. That perception makes the US and our remaining allies less safe, not more.

So here’s where things stand from my informal polling around the nation. America despises being at war and being lied to about it. Americans are dog-tired of the constant chaos and weary from trying to keep their heads above water. Most Americans are finally getting it through their heads that the so-called real enemy is the one percent, and the political parties that do their bidding. If I may be so bold, I’d also say that the current form of the GOP as a serious party, has peaked. They may exist for a while yet, but their relevance will steadily decline into eventual oblivion. The DNC will be little different if they do not make significant changes going forward. And this brings me to my final point. The pre-Trump, American era we all knew, is gone forever.

As we continue to hurtle towards the midterms, please remember that what came before will never return. If you do keep this thought foremost in your mind, it should trigger the urge within you to restore an America that is safe from the perils we are currently experiencing at the hands of the administration and the GOP. In order to move our nation forward and along the path our founders sought for us, we must rebuild the constitutional guardrails currently being dissembled by the White House. We must install an enforceable set of ethical guidelines for SCOTUS up to and including impeachment. We must restore a mechanism of oversight by congress that agencies cannot refuse to comply with. Sub-human immigration centers are a good example of why oversight by congress is required constitutionally.

We must make congress accountable to the people again. If we don’t, we certainly can’t say that we live in a republic. To make congress accountable, there must be absolute transparency in campaign finance and lobbying industries. There must be enforceable penalties for violating laws regulating these and related industries. Most of all, we must have well and accurately informed citizens that remain civically invested in their own communities. Democracy is not only a team sport, but a sport dependent upon contributions from everyone, just to survive. To thrive, we must all give a little more than we take, whether it’s with our vote, volunteer work, our voice at city council and county public forums, etc. In some small way, everyone of us is a cog in the machinery of American democracy. If that machinery is failing, by default, “we-the-people” are part of the problem. Ironically, this is the best news I’m gleaning from my travels.

Yes, it is good news that both “sides” recognize that our government is broken. It’s the one thing that nearly all Americans can agree on. From this foundation can bloom a new era of American-styled democracy. We can unify over strengthening our weaknesses as a republic. We can unify over transparency, truth, honor and what it truly means to be an American. We may not agree on all of these issues, but the public debate over them is what America was designed for in the first place, a style of government where everyone that wishes to have a say in that government, can.

As much as my travels have been sobering from a geo-political point of view, I believe that I’ve seen with my own eyes, an America that has nearly hit rock bottom. I’ve seen the beginning of the understanding that we have a lot of work to do as we rebuild our republic. We have an entire national security community hollowed out by ignorance, hate and greed. We have an economy dramatically out-of-balance, that supports only the elite wealth classes in a dignified manner. We have an entire citizenry that now believes that the justice system only works for those who can afford it. All of this must be addressed urgently and solutions must be based on our constitution and on facts, not political ideology. Yes my friends, we have our work cutout for us.

Where I find a great deal of optimism is that most of America sees a broken nation that requires their attention. Most understand that all of us are part of the solution if we would just have the courage to try and to expend the energy. This is what gives me hope. Historically, America has never been afraid of hard work, especially when faced by a national crisis. We can and will do this, has been our unspoken mantra for 250 years. What’s important now, is that when the current house of cards falls, that the right voices will be there to lead us back towards a stronger version of our founding ideals.

There is hope on the horizon America. The signs may be faint, but the insanity we’ve lived with throughout the Trump era, is beginning to recede. Reality seems to have once again gained a foothold, even in the reddest of states and counties. I see an America reforming around the better angels of her nature, ready to lick our wounds and to get right back to work putting our nation of ideals, back onto a just and honorable course. Bravo to those who’ve fought the current threat from the very beginning, and to those who’ve just now climbed aboard the resistance train. You’re not just resisting… you are restoring our nation’s true values.

My very warmest regards to all,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is one I’ve been pondering for months. Anyone that has been paying attention during the Trump-era and especially this second term, know full well that our midterm elections, will not be “free and fair” elections. Some of the GOP’s preparations go back more than a decade, and have greatly accelerated since Inauguration Day. They’ve been radically gerrymandering, changing state election laws to disenfranchise minority or opposition voters, firing election workers from your local voting station, removing whole staffs within federal, state and Local governments who are responsible for safeguarding our elections, etc., etc., etc. In short, today’s Republican congressional sycophants to the Trump administration, are denying us the very thing that makes us Americans… the right to vote in free and fair elections.

The point is, no serious voter should be living under the illusion that November’s election will be free and fair. The only question that remains, is what will any of us do about it. Will we take to the streets, mob local congressional offices with angry voters, engage in all manner of civil disobedience etc.? What I am driving at is that we are 110 days until the Midterms and if we are to oppose the intended theft of our votes, we need to start now figuring out what our actions will be when it occurs. As I have been writing since my autopsy of the Democratic Party’s abject failure in 2024, they are worthless, absent from leadership and we must do this ourselves. So, let’s get serious about mapping out our response to a likely “rigged” election in November.

Background essays on the hapless DNC are below:

• Where o where has the DNC gone... - by Paul Cobaugh

• Democracy is dying and the DNC is AWOL - by Paul Cobaugh

I began writing about today’s topic just four days after Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2025 by writing, “An open letter to everyone’s friends and family that voted for Trump... again.” I followed up through February and March of 2025 with a six-part series on the coup underway by the administration, which included recommendations for who the resistance must target. Now, with only a hundred and ten days to go to the midterms, those recommendations are not only still appropriate but now urgently needed. To save everyone a great deal of reading, I’ll cover a few of those highlighted recommendations again today. There will also be some modifications to those previous recommendations.

Okay my friends and fellow patriots, let’s get serious. The short answer to “what will we do” must include civil disobedience on a scale not seen since my youth during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Between 1960-1970 when I was between 4 and 14 years old, the evening news was dominated by the Vietnam War, massive protests, demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts and every other form of civil disobedience, up to and including occasional violence that even extended to bombings. The Reverend Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream speech” in Washington D.C. drew hundreds of thousands of marchers and he’d already given different versions of this iconic American speech at huge rallies in many other large cities around the country. By the time that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had passed, the US had begun fighting in Vietnam. Those massive, nationwide protests simply rolled over into anti-war protests.

For the rest of the 1960s and even as far as the early 70s, the war in Vietnam and the protests against it were mainstays on the 6:00 o’clock news with Walter Cronkite. One minute we’d be watching actual combat in Vietnam and a few minutes later, the news about some enormous protest, sit-in, demonstration and even terrorist bombings at US universities. Americans are no stranger to mass protest. In fact, it’s part of who we are as Americans. World War I veterans marched on Washington during the Great Depression to acquire their promised bonuses, only to be ridden down by US cavalry troops led by none other than Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur would go on to become a four-star general during WW II and the Korean War, before being fired by President Truman.

There is a deep chord within American citizens that will not tolerate being talked down to, deprived of our rights and threatened. This is all that we get from the current administration. They refuse to follow the law, even when ordered to by federal judges, which leaves us, “we-the-people” subjected to the same tyranny that sparked our revolution from British rule. We’ve seen multiple of the “No-Kings” rallies in the past which were nice and inspiring, but they went towards no stated goal and worst of all, were not supported by any sustaining narrative. Since the resistance is devoid of a narrative, we must craft one. It could simply be as elementary as, “we demand that the administration and ruling party adhere to the law.” It could also be longer and more detailed but either way, we need one. Fighting the daily outrages are necessary to some extent but the only thing that wins, is an overarching narrative with supporting narratives that express our grievances simply and elegantly. The best delivery method for such narratives is in person supported by thousands of patriots who believe as we do.

When I talk about massive civil displays of our anger, I’m not talking about once a month or more, I’m talking about millions of Americans in the streets every weekend until after election day. Where these protests occur is equally important to the numbers. As I have been saying for over a year, take these massive protests right to the home offices of Republican senators and representatives, and drag the local media with you. Every elected Republican official is vulnerable and collectively, they are the weakest link. This makes them an ideal target for large-scale protests. Their editors may be cowed by threats from the administration, but they cannot ignore thousands of local citizens in the streets.

Look guys, most mainstream US media these days has the spine of a garden slug. If we don’t force them to do their jobs, they won’t. The only way to get their attention is to “get in good trouble,” as recommended by the late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis. Here’s the deal and there’s no way around it, every sitting Republican in congress is terrified of the midterms. Our mission is to ensure that they will fear the wrath of the people.

The GOP did this to themselves. At every turn during the Trump era, they’ve had a chance to follow the law and support their constituents. At every opportunity they’ve chosen poorly in order to not rile the madness of their dear leader in the Oval Office. Our government has not been this unhinged from the law and the constitution its based upon, since the outset of the Civil War. Unless we are loud and insistent with our demands of them, they will refuse to put our needs over their fear of Trump. It really is this simple.

Many Americans still refuse to believe that this administration, supported by the entire Republican presence in congress, will attempt to “rig” the midterms. I find their disbelief incredulous since the administration has been breaking the law and violating our constitution from the very first hour of this maximalist-corrupt, second Trump term. Some of the nation’s best analysts have been following the administration’s plans to steal our midterms now for months. Todd Blanche, acting AG, Pete Hegseth at DoD, Markwayne Mullin at DHS, and countless other administration officials have sat in front of congressional hearings and refused to commit to not putting troops and DHS law enforcement at our polling sites. We’ve seen this movie before, especially with the Supreme Court. They say what they need to in order to be confirmed as cabinet members by the US Senate and then… turn around and fail to keep their pledges. There is no honor among thieves.

For those curious as to “how” the midterms will not be “free and fair,” please see the links below.

• Are President Trump and His Allies Laying the Groundwork To Undermine Our Elections? | Campaign Legal Center

• Trump moves to tighten federal control of elections ahead of midterms

• The Campaign to Undermine the Midterms | Brennan Center for Justice

• How the Trump administration is trying to reshape how elections are run PBS News

• Trump accused of trying to ‘rig’ elections after firing federal commissioners | Donald Trump | The Guardian

• 8 Things to Know About Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” Midterm Elections — ProPublica

• Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections — ProPublica
  
  

  

Then there’s that voter suppression bill called the Save Act, that both Trump and his congressional cronies are pushing hard. Every single Republican that I have read about or heard speak in a video, has lied outrageously about this voter suppression bill. It’s simply a solution looking for a problem. In other words, we have no issue with non-American voters. There is not one shred of evidence to support the need for this additional costly addition to laws that have been on the books, since 1996.

"Congress is moving the SAVE Act suite of bills, which would disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans from registering to vote. This time, they’ve added provisions that would also make it harder to cast one’s ballot. Here is what you need to know. 

A renewed push for the SAVE Act 
For the last several months, online supporters of the SAVE Act have partnered with President Trump, Representative Chip Roy (R-TX-21), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), and even Elon Musk to promote the legislation through social media platforms. The focus has been on spreading mis- and disinformation about voting in our country, largely around non-citizen voting. 

Claims that non-citizens participate in federal elections are wildly overdramatized and false. In fact, it is already illegal for non-citizens to register to vote AND cast a ballot in state and federal elections across the country. In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice found that across 42 jurisdictions with high immigrant populations, there were only 30 cases of suspected noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes cast (.0001%). An audit of Georgia voter rolls found that out of 8.2 million registered voters, there were only 9 instances where a noncitizen cast a ballot. Claims that noncitizen voting is a true threat capitalize on racism and fear to promote certain politicians' agendas."

- The SAVE Act is Headed to the Senate: A Push to Restrict Voting Access
- League of Women Voters
- February 23, 2026

Summary

As you can see, there is no “if” the Republicans will attempt to steal our election. There is no DNC, no Congress, no SCOTUS and no other guardrails to protect our most important constitutional rights. We are the cavalry and so we must act like it. The best targets for our outrage are every single GOP elected official, whether local or at the national level. After well over a decade of Trumpism, anyone still supporting the GOP, are complicit in the destruction of our republic. It’s truly that simple. Everyone that cares about American democracy and our children and grandchildren’s future, now has no choice but to be loud and dogged in their pursuit of justice. I realize for those trapped in neighborhoods, small towns and rural regions of the country, have a tough row to hoe due to peer pressure. Urban folks are much the same at the neighborhood level. We must face our fears and take to the streets. I protest best from my keyboard but will take any opportunity to join in the throngs of patriots that do take to the streets.

As for what we are shaming Republican officials for, there are plenty of options but if we narrow the list down a bit, the campaign becomes more cohesive. For example, most honest Americans regardless of political preference, wants; justice for the Epstein victims regardless of who is involved, justice for the January 6th insurrection, an enforceable code of ethics for our deviant SCOTUS, restoration of every dollar stolen from us, the tax payers, to vote out every sitting Republican in congress, an overturned Citizens United, and last but not least, an impeached president and to investigate and prosecute Trump, his family and his oligarchs without exception, for violations of US law in their business dealings. As we all well know… this list could be pages longer if necessary, but I’m certain that you get the point.

In many respects, this essay isn’t just about what to do after the election has been stolen, but what we must do here and now. A little over a hundred days to operate, isn’t very much time, considering how much pressure we must put on the administration, SCOTUS, Congress and even the DNC. Work together to form a plan, get some great walking or running shoes and let’s hit the pavement. It’s the only way to hold onto what millions of Americans have fought to protect. This is our country, not Trump’s, his oligarchs, his spineless GOP and their voters, who put us into this mess in the first place. It’s too late to save the GOP voters but we can save the republic. That’s a pretty darn good trade in my book.

My very best for your weekend,

Paul

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p.s. Over the next week or two, I’ll be spending as much time with loved ones as possible. It’s that time of year for visiting with family and dear friends. I will try and push out an essay or so. I look at this partial break as a time to recharge my batteries for the last few months of this election. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in our streets fighting for our liberty.

TAT readers,

Well my friends, today’s essay will anger many and on both sides of the aisle. Antisemitism is now pervasive in the US and rapidly increasing globally, largely due to Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. Not only is most mainstream media responsible for the threatening uptick, but Americans especially should be deeply ashamed. The left is always bashing the right and legitimately so for their addiction to conspiracy theories but in the case of Israel, those on the left are every bit as guilty. Personally, I’ve had enough and today I will say so bluntly. There are several components to and causes of the disgraceful behavior we are witnessing by Americans who proclaim to love Israel, but are cheerleading this cruel, millennia-old bigotry like it’s their favorite sports team.

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills."

- Dunning-Kruger Effect
- Psychology Today
- By Devon Frye
- April 24th, 2026

Both Dems and Republicans are guilty and make for a perfect example, of the the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which simply states that those with no or limited education and experience, believe themselves to be experts on complex topics. The ongoing situation in the Middle East currently revolving around Israel and Iran, is but the latest episode in the age-old waves of virulent antisemitism. These self-proclaimed experts believe that Israel is “genocidal,” an occupier, a cruel task-master for the Arab populations that have been redefined in my lifetime, as Palestinians. Oh how perfectly ignorant these haters are. Today, I seek to dispel much of the steer manure emanating from the mouths of these ill-informed and dangerous propagandists. This issue is not one-sided and while that Israel has a role in the casualties of innocents, the truth is quite far from what they are being accused of.

Before I continue, I want to make something stridently clear; I want peace and security for both Israel and the Palestinians who have been exhaustively abused, tortured and murdered by Hamas, Hizbollah and other violent extremist armies doing the bidding of Iran, Russia and to some extent China. As I wrote in an early essay of a 26 part series on the war in Gaza, there is plenty of blame to go around. As the name of this publication clearly indicates, I will tell you the truth about this dangerous trend, without bias. It’s up to readers to make up their own mind. I do this because the mainstream media has been lying to all of us since October 7th, 2023. Between those swallowing their lies whole, and global media oligarchs funding and disseminating the propaganda, thousands more will die on all sides of this equation. Anyone mouthing these lies, will share some of the blame for future victims.

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First the basics

There are countless arguments for and against Israel’s right to the tiny bit of land they hold in their historical homeland. For roughly 2,000 years, Jews around the world were excluded from governing their own nation. Both Jews and Arabs have lived on the land, for far longer than that. Most history books will put Jewish existence on what today is called Israel, at around 4,000 years. The Jewish calendar, goes back 5,786 years. Islam appeared in around 510 C.E., and Christianity of course at 2026 years ago. All three, plus many other religions, have lived in the historical state ever since. All have a right to live in what today is known as the “Jewish State,” but like every other country on earth, they must abide by the laws of the country.

During the post WW I occupation of the region by Britain, every single inhabitant, regardless of religion or ethnicity, had the word, “Palestinian” written across their official ID papers. This should put the matter of name to rest. Yes, there are ancient historical name issues as well, but they have little to no relevance to what everyone likes to argue about today. To simplify, mostly Jews and Arabs have lived there from a time predating any of the religions we recognize today. Both the original Arabs and Jews are considered “Semitic,” simply because both languages come from a specific group of languages. Both Islam and Judaism are comprised of several ethnicities, and not all Arabs are Muslim anymore than all Israelis are Jewish.

Today, most people in the region practice some form of Judaism, Islam or Christianity, although several other religions call the region home too. Within Israel, all are free to practice their own religion, while that in many of the other regional Arab states, there are limitations, some official and some biased-based. Our modern conflicts began sometime after the beginning of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century. For those babbling propagandists spewing the word Zionism like they had just bitten into a rotten apple, the word simply refers to the holy mountain in Jerusalem where the Al-Aqsa Mosque now stands. Zionism is simply about Jews going home with the intent of establishing a Jewish state in their original homeland.

There has never been a time when Jews have not lived in what today is Israel. This vision was realized in 1948, when the UN saw fit after the Holocaust, to designate part of then British Palestine, as the new state of Israel. As you can see from the map at the time of Partition below, Israel was only about 10 miles wide between the sea and Jordan next door. An indefensible strip of land that with modern weaponry would be of no value for defense against the perpetual attacks by Israel’s neighbors, beginning from the very first minutes of Israel’s 1948 statehood. For the record, the US administration under Harry S. Truman, played a major role in the success of the UN vote. This would become the beginning of the special relationship we have with Israel, although there have been several rough spots in that relationship.

The background provided is barely a thumbnail sketch of the complicated history of the region and its people, but is enough to better understand what follows about antisemitism.

Israel is not committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

There are several ways to approach this topic but I will only focus on those I feel most critical to this essay. For a “spoiler alert,” the genocide claim is patently false by any standard. There are varying interpretations to the term genocide, depending on which International Law is being discussed. I will use the UN version here for the sake of discussion. Genocide is discussed in Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide. Even in the UN version, sometimes framed as a bit more ambiguous than other international standards, clearly states that there must be “intent” to the actions enumerated in the quote below. To believe Israel has intent to commit the five named crimes below, is to suspend belief in reality. No facts support the claim of willful “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

"The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.

The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

- A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

- Genocide
- United Nations, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect

The reasons that I can say with full confidence that Israel has no intent to destroy the Palestinian people is that as of 2022, 21.1 percent of Israeli residents are Palestinians. Also, there are still over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. The accusation fails with even a cursory look.

Arabs represent one-fifth of Israel’s population. Systemic discrimination, outbreaks of communal violence, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to strain their ties with Israel’s Jewish majority.

- Arabs comprise just over 20 percent of Israel’s population. The vast majority are citizens, while those in Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital, are considered “permanent residents.”

- Arab citizens have the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis, but they tend to live in poorer cities, have less formal education, and face other challenges that some experts attribute to structural discrimination.

- Arab political parties have long struggled to gain representation in Israel’s government, and many Arabs have expressed alarm at the leadership of right-wing Jewish politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

- What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel
- Council on Foreign Relations
- October 26, 2023 

As you can see on the map below, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens, live in the north of Israel and not in the West Bank and Gaza, where there is a constant hotbed of terrorism of violence by Islamic violent extremists, against their own people. This is not to say that there are not problems though. Arab Israelis often live in poorer cities and have less education. There has long been a serious debate about whether this is attributed to systemic bias, much like we have against minorities here in the US. An additional problem is that many Israelis, often far-right American Jews move to the settlements in the West Bank and behave as badly as American far-right violent extremist groups like, neo-Nazis, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3%ers etc. There is regular violence against the Arabs living adjacent to these far-right settlements and the inhabitants suffer greatly from the extreme, right-wing violence.

At the beginning of the October 7th war, there were roughly 2.1 million Arabs living in Gaza. Despite the war beginning in October of 2023, Gaza’s population grew in 2024, according to CIA analysis. We never saw the scenes we have witnessed where there is actual massive starvation such as in parts of Africa, showing tens of thousands of Gazans dead from starvation, as mainstream news would have us believe. I’m not saying that life is good for those in Gaza because it’s not. Their life is hell, but the crocodile tears from the media, often without the slightest credible source, was and continues to be overtly dishonest. This is why it is called propaganda.

Now let’s get down to the sorting the whole casualty claims by the known propagandists at the Hamas Health Ministry and numbers being published by the UN. First and foremost, I was well-trained and by some of the very best intelligence analysts regarding the insidious propaganda wing of Hamas, of which the Health Ministry is a part. They have their own production company, actors, equipment etc., as if they were a Hollywood studio. Much of what is trafficked on social media platforms, is derived directly from Hamas’ propaganda dissemination networks. Yet Americans, oblivious to propaganda and how it works, share adversarial propaganda like it was some sort of award they won playing on the local softball team.

As for the casualty numbers themselves, most military estimates from a variety of global sources put the strength of Hamas in Gaza between 20,000 and 95,000 prior to the war. The 20,000 is low based on the amount of support offered by Iran and other variables. I believe the 95 is also ridiculous. By extrapolating from multiple sources, I would conservatively put the number closer to 45,000. At last check, the number reported for total Palestinian, non-combatant casualties in Gaza around 67,000. This number as we all now know, does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. As for IDF and US intelligence estimates, I am hesitant to believe either considering that October 7th was a massive intelligence failure, not dissimilar from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.

At any rate, the numbers game could be argued in a variety of different ways and we may never know the truth with any certainty. None of the casualty figures account for the deaths of Palestinian non-combatants at the hands of Hamas as human shields, summary executions, failure to allow families to leave north Gaza for protected areas etc., etc. Israel operates with an even higher standard regarding warning prior to attacks, than the US. They have even gone so far as to text individual innocents, call them, employ radio and all other means to clear target areas of civilians. When innocent Palestinians remain anyway, it’s most often because Hamas combatants will not let them.

In new reporting, there are an alleged 40,000 fighters again in Gaza, after nearly three years of war. Again, few statistics from this war are verifiable with any accuracy. Still, the world blames Israel for all of the casualties. Terrorism doesn’t end. It just evolves and there are other mostly Sunni Muslim VEOs (violent extremist organizations) also in Gaza and supportive of Hamas. Hamas and their supporters never disarmed as required by the faux peace deal. They will not stop attacking Israel or their own people.

The UN and other NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) are complicit in the casualty chaos as well and when challenged, a May of 2024 report shows, they had to revise the number of women and children killed by half. This is not the only problem with the UN in Gaza. Hamas, like most terrorist organizations use what are called, “protected sites” like schools, hospitals, Mosques etc. for military operations. Many of the several hundred kilometers of Hamas’ tunnel system in Gaza, had outlets inside of these alleged protected spaces. In many cases, UN workers knew that they were working right above operational tunnels for Hamas operatives. They said nothing. A new report now shows that Israel had complained to humanitarian NGOs operating in Gaza, that they were using the falsely high casualty numbers to boost fundraising, ignoring the antisemitism in their bid for donations.

Then there is the Hamas playbook that intentionally creates “collateral damage” or CIVCAS (civilian casualties) for the purpose of propaganda.

The IDF, Israeli Defense Force, has been observed first-hand in their operations in Gaza, by John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. I agree with John that what we see in Gaza is not genocide and again, because there is no intent by Israel to annihilate all Gazan Palestinians, or even a significant percentage. I also agree with him that in war, there will be individuals or maybe even a small unit or so that is guilty of war crimes. I have no doubt that this also occurred on some level in Gaza. This is an accurate assessment that I can easily get behind, having spent a year in Baghdad during the second worst year of the two-decade war. Urban combat comes with extraordinary risks for civilians and combatants alike. Bad things happen. Sometimes, horrible things happen. Both the US and Israeli forces hold their troops accountable for when, “horrible things happen.” These bad things normally occur in the heat of battle and without premeditation. Soldiers carry the weight of these painful events for the rest of their lives. Of course, there are bad apples too.

To be clear, I am making no excuses for those who committed war crimes. I am simply saying that as horrible as such activities are, they are still a tiny minority of the casualties. Ironically, mainstream media has ignored the Israeli casualties from almost the beginning of the war. The only real respite was when there were hostage releases, but those headlines shared the front page with ignorant and unsupported accusations of genocide against the IDF. Media coverage hasn’t only been poor, but has been in my opinion, overtly antisemitic due to pro-Palestinian and Hamas favoritism. I scarcely have words for most of these alleged news sources. Ask yourself… how often do we read or watch news that treats Hamas as badly as the IDF? Apparently our mainstream news moguls are pro-Hamas.

In years past, when people would ask me about good news sources, I would generally recommend the AP, Reuters and the BBC. After reading Reuters and the BBC’s decidedly anti-Israeli coverage of the war in Gaza, I will never read either again. In fact, from my special edition on the war in Gaza, with the 26 essays, five were detailed looks at the acutely dishonest reporting. I have posted them below for those with deeper interest. Any honest person will be horrified at how our favorite news sources sold-out Israel and still does. That dishonest coverage with their sensational claims of mass civilian casualties based on propaganda sources, was in my opinion the basis for the worldwide wave of antisemitism generating additional threats for Israel and Jews, globally.

• Has all media, good and bad, forgotten how to report with facts and context?

• “If it bleeds, it leads” - by Paul Cobaugh

• I derive no satisfaction from this, "I told you so."

• Mainstream news outlets are borderline antisemitic in their reporting about the war in Gaza.

• Are Journalism ethics really a thing? - by Paul Cobaugh

And the threats to the innocents in Israel and Gaza, have now materialized into not only antisemitism, but Islamophobia, already a threat to Muslims within western nations. At the height of the war, all mainstream media used blaring headlines with the casualty figures from the Hamas Health Ministry and the parts of a complicit UN to sell their reporting. Never mind that the figures were false and never drew a distinction between fighters and non-combatants. In the US, Islamophobia once again spiked alongside of antisemitism, inciting violence against Muslims while concurrently, generating the highest spike in antisemitism in decades.

Miss and disinformation about the war, dangerously impacts both Jews and Muslims. What the hell is wrong with the leadership of the 6 media entities that control nearly all media in some manner or other? How disgusting that they are willing to risk death and destruction of innocents just to increase their bottom lines?

The so-called big six multi-media conglomerates, control most of what we all see, read, hear or watch. As we can see in Gaza, Ukraine and other violent conflicts around the world, these media companies are profiting at the expense of human lives.

As we look at these six media monsters one must ask themselves, why are these thuggish corporations so antisemitic or are they simply selling Jewish and Muslim lives for profit? There are even better questions for all of us if we are to ever have peace in the region or for that matter… in any region. On both sides of the wars in the Middle East, innocent human beings are dying and suffering immensely, and all based on lies and conspiracy theories that continue to stir the pot of violence. The bottom line in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and the rest, is that if we do not dispense with these massive terrorist armies built, trained and equipped by villainous nation-states like Iran, Russia and China, no one will be safe… ever.

As for the antisemitism, both the US right and left now have disgraceful agendas for Israel. The right, now based on Christian Nationalism instead of Christianity, only loves Israel for their own apocalyptic purposes, not because they love Jews. The left, often called “bleeding heart” liberals, are in such a hurry to help everyone and everything that they have allowed themselves to be swayed by propaganda, not common-sense and facts. Their now deep commitment to calling Israel genocidal in order to demonstrate their good intentions, are now tacitly supporting Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran. Both sides have missed the point. Employing antisemitism based on lies is little different from behaving as Hamas, who has a decades-long commitment to actual genocide against the Jewish state.

No long-term good comes from decisions based on lies. The only way to solve problems is to put all of the facts on the table and then seek a solution. Any alleged solution based on lies, is a ticking time bomb, that will take innocent lives wantonly and randomly. War is truly hell and it is always the non-combatants in a combat zone that pay the heaviest price. How about we stop acting like social warriors for good if in fact, our intended solutions are all based on falsehoods? Truth is hard and most human beings wish to be the “nice person.” We must all learn that being nice requires honesty. Being “nice” is killing innocent Israelis and Palestinians.

War is hell and as cold as this sounds, when wars occur, we are faced with one of the lowest rungs on the ladder of humanity. I am grateful that most never see or experience it. There is no “war-lite” to assuage the sensitivities of those who have not experienced it. Decisions must be made and there is a cost to every single one. Israel has been under attack or threat, every day since her statehood. A thousand or more rockets from terrorists a year land on Israeli soil. Children are taught things that no child should experience. This is part of daily life for all Israelis. Going to war with Hamas in Gaza was their only option to defend herself and her citizens. Now, all of the armchair quarterbacks are criticizing those painful decisions. Sure, with Bibi and his far-right coalition leading Israel, some of those decisions don’t meet my standards, but I’m not in his shoes. He won’t escape this war untouched and prison may be waiting for him. Time will tell.

As for Israel, unfortunately, her Jewish residents have a sad few thousand years of dealing with genocidal antisemitism based on lies. She will survive but at what cost? I will stand up for her and her people, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any of the other religions calling her home.

My very best for your weekend,

Paul

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TAT readers,

First and foremost, my very best for your Fourth of July weekend. On a personal note and as I noted in my May 29th essay, I will not be celebrating the 250th birthday this weekend. America under the Trump and Republican regime, is not America. I will though, do as I and my family have always done, celebrate our founding values with gratitude for the courage of our founders, the sacrifice of those who have perished in defense of our republic, and the effort of the resistance to restore what is constitutionally ours. You see, America is not like other nations, as that our constitutional republic is built on ideals, not monarchies, oligarchies, corruption and lawless authoritarian rule. I will not be alone.

I’m writing this by letting my mind wander to memories, who we are as Americans and general musings about how much I am grateful to be part of the resistance to tyranny. You and the patriots that have come before, inspire me.

This morning, I am just back from visiting with my oldest and my daughter-in-law, who have both been teaching in an international school system for going on two decades now, I found it joyful and refreshing from the political turmoil I have been writing about for nearly four years now. Family is something I hold dear to my heart and I’m sure you do as well. This prompted a thought this morning as I dug through the news I had ignored while laughing, eating and savoring the kids.

As my mind drifted back to joyful family fourth of July celebrations full of great family, food, music and of course the requisite water fights with cousins, I recalled my late parents renewing their wedding vows on their Valentine’s Day, fiftieth anniversary, 24 years ago. From the warmth of those beautiful memories, I seized upon an idea. As the idea formed in my mind, I thought that it’s one that others opposed to the GOP regime in Washington may enjoy or consider as well. How about instead of focusing on the fake patriotism on display on the national mall, all honest Americans that still revel in our nation’s true ideals, renew our vows to our brilliant constitution that defines us as Americans and to each other. There is nothing partisan about this. It’s simply a celebration of “who we are as a nation” and who we will be again, post this administration.

As I look back over my youth, I realize that in many ways, I grew up in a world that the iconic artist of Americana, Norman Rockwell could have painted. Those paintings captured an America that now seems ancient history, but I believe still lives in many American hearts. Many call my dedication to our national ideals, Pollyannish, but I choose to believe that I am little different from most Americans, except maybe this crop of Trump-era Republicans. As long-time readers have read before, my mom was a lifelong Republican and Dad the opposite. I learned at home that well-informed Americans discuss ideas, framed by our constitutional values and make political decisions based on reality, not the short-term whims of political parties. Both crossed party line when necessary and often voted the same way. This is why I believe that renewing our relationship with what America was designed to stand for, could be a unifying factor in these perilous, hyper partisan times.

Our founders, especially George Washington as our only independent president abhorred political parties, often called factions in the colonial era. In his Farewell Address and other of his writings, he consistently warned against factions as one of the most severe threats to our nascent republic. He was right then and in one notable passage, it’s as if he actually prophesized a Trump-like president and a party like the Trump-era, MAGA GOP. Please see this in the quote below.

"However combinations or associations of the above description (factions) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

- Washington's Farewell Address
- President George Washington
- September 19th, 1996

He like our other founders were men of principles based more on the Scottish Enlightenment, than the commonly but erroneously assumed Christian or other religious values, and those principles were forged into our constitution. It’s not that there wasn’t some overlap, but our founders were deeply spiritual men and recognized, “inalienable human rights” as the key to our new republic, not specific religious values. In fact, many of our founders related to Deism as much as the churches they attended. The separation of church and state and the absence of any reference in our constitution to political parties, should tell those with a bit of common-sense, that America was for everyone, not a select few. If our republic is to survive, we need to get back to basics.

We’ve sadly departed from two and a half centuries of the philosophical high of our founding principles, into beliefs now more focused on celebrity, wealth and materialism, but especially so in the Trump era. To be truly American, requires us to ignore the six, far-right justices, sitting on our SCOTUS bench. That they consider themselves as “Originalists” is absurd and offensive to those who read history. For example, if one reads history, they would find this administration’s overt preference for Christian Nationalism, would have offended our founders greatly, especially the primary writers of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

"While judicial originalists continue to trumpet the importance of history, they rarely take that history on its own terms. They claim to be wedded to the Constitution’s eighteenth-century meaning, yet they fail to engage in the deeper work of reconstructing the often-unfamiliar understandings of constitutionalism on which that original meaning was based. Justice Gorsuch insisted in Rahimi that originalism was the only thing that could keep judges on the straight and narrow, “seeking to honor the supreme law the people have ordained rather than substituting our will for theirs.”8 Yet in foisting modern constitutional assumptions on an eighteenth-century past that did not share them, jurists like Gorsuch ignore the supreme law those earlier people in fact made. These originalist jurists end up rewriting the constitutional past based on the logic of the legal present. In that respect, their interpretive approach resembles the living constitutionalism they otherwise disparage. A better understanding of early American constitutionalism might not be able to solve all the constitutional problems of today, but it can expose how faithless today’s Supreme Court originalists too often are to the history they claim is the lodestar of our law."

- Why is the Supreme Court Obsessed with Originalism?
- Yale University Press
- Jonathan Gienapp
- October 21, 2024

To make matters even worse, we must not tolerate this administration’s violations of our constitution and especially their full-frontal assault on our Bill of Rights. What the administration doesn’t fight in court, like last week’s challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment about Birthright Citizenship, they simply ignore, even when federal courts order them to obey them. To any sane person, four SCOTUS justices voting against the Fourteenth Amendment last week is the judicial version of a very rude hand gesture directed at our founders. This isn’t “originalism,” it’s Sedition. Unsurprisingly, four far-right justices named Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and with Kavanaugh producing a mealy-mouthed concurrence but with areas of dissent, represent today’s GOP.

"Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

Another equally important provision was the statement that “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments."

- 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)
- The National Archives

Everything we true patriots celebrate this weekend, is based on our constitution and the mostly honorable manner in which most Supreme Courts have historically honored our foundational document. If we cannot support our founder’s deep scholarship and brilliant democratic innovation, we are unworthy of the title, “American.” This is why I refuse to celebrate the laughable America 250 fiasco on the national mall. The administration is apparently having trouble selling a milestone holiday celebration of an America that they don’t believe in, and are attempting to replace with lawless autocracy and oligarchy.

"This spectacle on the National Mall in Washington, DC, part of Trump’s Trump-centric celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, is like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock."

- Trump's Great American State Fair is a fabulous flop
- USA Today
- Rex Huppke
- July 1, 2026

I don’t know exactly what Republican crowds are celebrating, but it sure as hell isn’t the America most of us grew up believing in. I know for sure that in my family of professional educators and public servants, we know the difference. I bet anyone reading this essay does too. This year especially, we will all celebrate with gratitude, that we do know who we are as Americans. Those Republicans still supporting this version of the GOP, clearly are clueless. Another part of true American identity that I will celebrate this weekend, is that America is DEI. A nation of immigrants, could hardly be anything but DEI. That today’s Republicans fight DEI and all religions besides White Christian Nationalism, is one of their most demonstrable acts against the constitution, and those who’ve shed their life-blood securing and sustaining it. All my life has been about DEI, even though it really just means what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.”

Almost last on this short list of the America I am grateful for and will celebrate vigorously this weekend, is that most of us still have our First Amendment Rights to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and separation of church and state. We are losing ground rapidly though on all fronts. Government workers and gov contractors risk losing their jobs due to having their social media and internal communications monitored for any real or inferred criticism of this administration, Americans are arrested in our streets and their homes, for legally exercising their constitutional right to free speech and freedom to assemble, our mainstream press, like CBS, ABC etc., are too cowardly to exercise their right to freedom of the press, while the Republican Party, including our SCOTUS, continues to whittle away the wall between church and state.

My eternal gratitude is for those willing and able to exercise these constitutionally guaranteed rights within the resistance. I personally will not bend on these rights and will continue to speak loudly and clearly in support of them, just as all of you are.

Well my fellow citizens, I’ve meandered a bit but I am certain that by now, you get the point (s). Our constitution defines who we are as Americans and those who attempt to deny or restrict our rights, are not American patriots. In fact, they are the precise opposite. They you will find running amok with their little red hats, and quoting propagandists like FOX News, who I personally consider a foreign agent. Rupert Murdoch and his clan have sold out America from the very beginning and employed the tactics I know from my career in influence, to brainwash the GOP into their fake patriotism and cruel behavior towards the rest of us.

Finally, the one thing I am most grateful for is that the spirit of our constitutional republic, lives on and is on fire in all of you. America is a nation of principles and citizens like you, that fiercely defend those principles against all challengers. It is not a monarchy or any other term from our political science classes that allows leaders and their governments to oppress, “we the people.” We are the only thing that stands in opposition to tyranny and every single day, I see all of you fighting the good fight. Things may seem daunting but the tide is turning and it’s all of you that have made that happen. American patriots have yet to fail in defense of liberty. We won’t fail this time either. This is what terrifies every Republican still supporting this administration. Trump MAGA types in our neighborhoods are quieter. Trolls are fewer and lower courts are pushing back with extraordinary courage. The real power though, is in you and the true America we celebrate this weekend.

True American spirit is what has terrified our adversaries since the first World War. That spirit precedes us on the battlefield and in our generosity. The world doesn’t despise Americans, it despises this administration. We see this as foreign World Cup fans flood our nation and fall in love with Americans. Remember, we are a nation of people and laws, not tyrants and oligarchs. When this is all over, both fascists and oligarchs will rue the day they attempted to take our freedom and rob us of our constitutional birthrights. That day is coming sooner than they think and we won’t rest until it does.

This Fourth of July, will be me renewing my vows to America. I hope you’ll join me. Remember to celebrate yourselves for fighting to sustain the freedom we’ve celebrated for 250 years. You are what makes America great.

Viva Libertad

Paul

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TAT readers,

I don’t know exactly why, but this week I’m more frustrated and downright angry with this outlaw administration and Republican Party than usual. As most of you know, I despise political parties on principle, although I vote like most independents, for the best choice, based exclusively on the behavior of candidates and parties. I have not voted for a Republican since President Bush senior’s first run for the White House. I believe he came to the Oval Office, exceptionally well-qualified for the presidency. He led the effort to remove Iraq from Kuwait during the first Gulf War, with a mastery of foreign affairs not seen since. Bush Sr. led the free-world through that crisis as well as our beloved JFK managed the Cuban Missile Crisis while that I was in elementary school.

“A government of laws, and not of men”
― John Adams

Today’s Republican Party is intolerant of experience, integrity, honor and intelligence, preferring culture wars, corruption and I dare say treason, to honoring our constitution. Selling out US national security to our most dangerous adversaries while destroying alliances with tried and true allies, is by definition, aiding and abetting the enemy or simply put, treasonous. Because of them, we are no longer a “nation of laws, not men.” Without law, there is no America and we damn sure better do something about it while that we still can. While the GOP is dismantling our national security community, they are concurrently abusing so many of our laws, that I’ve lost count.

DOJ refuses to obey or enforce the law and our current SCOTUS, backs them regularly. To make matters even worse for us, “we the people” are being harassed, assaulted and arrested unjustly all the while the GOP protects our oppressors from the local level, all the way through our Supreme Court. They refuse to even investigate the murder of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who all of America watched being murdered by DHS officers, for simply exercising their constitutional rights. This violates that other iconic American founding value that states, “we are all equal before the law.” The entire administration violates multiple of our constitutional rights daily and aggressively. A perfect example of this can be seen in all DHS immigration activities where they abuse our First Amendment Rights so egregiously, that they are better titled, the DFC, The Department of Fascism and Corruption.

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

Thomas Jefferson

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the Bill of Rights. For the record, our founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison, long considered the “father of our constitution,” were explicit in expecting our laws to be understandable by ordinary citizens. Jefferson went so far as to say that not only are laws required to be straightforward but added that making them too complex would allow lawyers and courts to interpret them in convoluted manners that could justify anything and everything.

What triggered my deep frustration today, is that the entire nation watches this administration, the Republican Party and their oligarchs, daily break the law, violate our most precious constitutional rights, and all while the DOJ applauds and supports their crime wave. A large percentage of this crime involves the enrichment of the Trump White House and family. The stock trading by members of congress and the grotesque looting of our treasury via massive markups in contracting, passing bills that reward corruption and the insane self-serving lawsuits used to coerce businesses and individuals into paying extortion fees to our mobster POTUS and his billionaire buddies.

A particularly painful wound for the American people is that the administration is denying us the rights and privileges carefully laid out in the constitution, our Bill of Rights and amendments to the constitution. Below are a couple of examples.

"The First Amendment provides several rights protections: to express ideas through speech and the press, to assemble or gather with a group to protest or for other reasons, and to ask the government to fix problems. It also protects the right to religious beliefs and practices. It prevents the government from creating or favoring a religion."

- The National Archives

Daily we witness aggressive violations of our First Amendment rights via a wide variety of administration actions. Jailing protestors during ICE raids violates violates two parts of the First Amendment, the right to free speech and right to assemble. Our free speech rights are being denied via censorship, coercion of networks to be “more White House friendly.” Stephen Colbert’s firing and the attempt to do the same to Jimmy Kimmel were stunningly audacious. Much of our personal and business digital media is being “moderated” by soulless tech companies that huge corporations hire to censor negative press about them.

Administration threats to deploy ICE, the Army and other federal law enforcement agencies at the polls for the midterms, is another assault on our free speech. Their intent is to discourage Americans from expressing ourselves at the polls, especially certain elements of US society like, minorities. In fact, all voter suppression laws and actions, are a violation of our free speech rights. Republicans in particular, have legislated countless such laws nationally over the past decade or so. As a Texan, I’m well aware of how drastically Republicans suppress voters, especially in non-white, poor and immigrant communities. If there was a gold medal for voter suppression, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Republican Party would have it.

Now Trump and the GOP are attempting to blow up our voting rights again, in blatantly unconstitutional ways such as, meddling with mail-in votes, placing armed forces at the polls and demanding voter data from the states and more. The Constitution is quite clear, that states, not the federal government run their elections. The GOP’s record speaks for itself, that neither laws or the constitution our laws are based upon, are not impediments to their lawlessness.

It’s not just our freedom of speech being violated either. Freedom of the press is drying up faster than a puddle in the desert.

"Since returning to the White House in 2025, President Trump has extended the war on the press he launched while running for his first presidential term. He has censored government data, attempted to dismantle US public broadcasters, weaponized independent government agencies to punish media that criticize his actions, halted aid funding for media freedom internationally, sued disfavored outlets, and applied pressure to install cronies to lead others. Press freedom in the United States continues to decline as a result of these actions."

- RSF/ Reporters without Borders

Another of our Bill of Rights abuses by the Trump administration, is their violations of the Fourth Amendment.

Fourth Amendment

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

- Constitution Annotated
- Congress.gov

One egregious example of Fourth Amendment violations are the warrantless searches conducted by DHS, ICE, CBP and other Executive Branch law enforcement. When the Bill of Rights was ratified as the first ten amendments to out constitution, American’s memories of British occupation which included constant intrusions into their private homes and lives without warrants, was still fresh in their minds. It’s in our DNA to jealously guard our privacy and the sanctity of our homes from government intrusion. The administration has triggered our anger pointedly, by stealing so much of our personal data via DOGE and other associated efforts. What the administration doesn’t steal, they buy from enormous data owners like, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Both the government and big data owners know so much about everyone of us who are not living off-the-grid. They know what we like, what we say digitally, where we are and a million other things, just from data-harvesting… often illegally. Like everything else, data can be helpful in our lives and conversely, extremely detrimental. This is why oversight and legal restraints about the collection, use, analysis and sharing of our personal information are critical to maintaining our privacy. The worst offenders in the data wars are often marketers who abuse our data to try and influence us to buy their products and services. This administration is demolishing rules, policies and laws governing the use of our data.

"On the day of his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order standing up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). On the Administration’s telling, the Elon Musk-led DOGE was created to address (broadly unsubstantiated) claims of fraud, waste, and abuse of government resources. But since its inception, DOGE personnel have unlawfully forced their way into sensitive databases across the federal government, including at agencies that provide critical services and handle vast stores of sensitive data. This includes the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and many others."

- EPIC’s Fight Against the Administration’s Privacy Abuses
- Electronic Privacy Information Center

Although the Bill of Rights is about our personal and collective civil rights, the administration and the Republican-led congress are additionally targeting the body of the constitution itself. Our losing war with Iran, which continues to prove that there is no ceasefire, is a flagrant violation of the constitution. Only congress can declare war and the recent GOP insanity about the War Powers Resolution, is proof-positive of their willful intention to break the law. Just this week on Tuesday, the GOP-led Senate finally developed a little bit of a backbone and passed a War Powers Resolution, limiting Trump’s power to wage war, only for Trump to storm into a meeting with Republican Senators on Wednesday, convincing them to reverse their votes and vacate the resolution. I have no idea how Republican congressmen can get around without any hint of a spine.

I’ve done a few hours of reading just to be able to pare down this essay to a manageable size. I was already familiar with much of the material, but the sheer quantity of material regarding both our laws and Republican violations is staggering. It’s safe to say that this administration and congress wake up every single day, with plans to violate the law and the constitution it’s based on. When this era of American history is written, just the corruption alone will fill a whole series of books.

Summary

As I close out this essay, I want to reinforce and expand on a couple of topics covered. First, I want to express that it is our constitution that makes us Americans. It’s not only law, but the basis for all American laws outside of the constitution. In nearly two and a half centuries, that most extraordinary document has held our nation together, through thick and thin. It has been amended over the years, precisely as our founders intended and now includes twenty-seven amendments. One of those amendments I did not mention in the body of the essay, the Fourteenth which grants birthright citizenship, is being challenged. At this point, I have little faith in our SCOTUS, which has a track record of supporting the Trump administration’s attempts to rewrite the interpretation of our constitution, so that it serves an all-powerful Executive Branch and elite wealth exclusively.

Our founding documents, especially the constitution, detail what it means to be an American and how our government is intended to work. The epic dishonesty of right-wing SCOTUS justices, calling themselves “originalists” offends me to the core. They are hellbent on altering our founder’s intentions in order to support oligarchy, Christian Nationalism and a wannabe king. Mitch McConnell, the architect of this court will be known in all future history books, as the man who sold-out our constitution. Without Mitch, this administration most likely would have never occurred. Chief Justice John Robert’s so-called “immunity” ruling and Citizens United decision were the nuclear weapons modern Republicans used against all the rest of us.

Finally, our Bill of Rights defines us as Americans. We grew up believing in the permanence of those inalienable human rights. It was our personal armor to protect ourselves from the predators of democracy. I don’t just read those rights, all my life I’ve defended them and done my very best to embody them. I don’t believe that I am alone either. Even today, I believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans also embody those rights. In my youth, rank and file Republicans and Democrats didn’t have culture wars about our rights, even though not all Americans benefitted from them equally. This is no longer true. These days, I am stunned by Republican congressmen who during hearings don’t even know their basic constitution or are intentionally lying about what it says. Regardless of political persuasion, we must all come together and stop the selloff of our republic. Those who still support this administration and version of the Republican Party, will not. We outnumber them two to one. We can do this, but it will take all of us.

I’ve done a good bit of soul-searching to understand why I am so frustrated and angry with Republicans for the past decade. The revelations from all that soul-searching have come into sharp focus these past few weeks. It has to do with identity and this may apply to many of you as well. I believe that the reason that those of us who are so furious with today’s Republicans and oligarchs, is because we see being American as a key part of our identity. Not that fake Americanism of today’s GOP but the version based on the freedoms expressed in the Bill of Rights. Those rights are key parts of our identity. When the critical elements of our identity are repeatedly assaulted, it forces us to evaluate our own survival. Being forced by outside events to ponder your own survival often prompts that fight, flight or freeze response we’re all familiar with. Apathetic voters or those afraid to speak up are in a “freeze response” while that the rest of us are in “fight” mode. The one response I don’t see anywhere in the resistance, is “flight.” That’s about the most American thing ever!

Cheers for the rest of your weekend,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today I will dig back into my CT/ Counterterrorism background in order to warn everyone about one of the myriad of well-planned threats to our midterm elections. Yesterday’s sentencing of nine men in Texas on terrorism charges based on the false premise that Antifa is a terrorist organization, should terrify any American, regardless of party. If the administration gets away with this, any of us standing against the unconstitutional and illegal actions of this un-American and overtly corrupt administration, run the risk of being falsely accused of terrorism.

"A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent."

- Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison
- The Guardian
- Sam Levine
- June 23, 2026

In the Guardian article quoted above, there is plenty of detail as to what did and did not occur however, this case is far from transparent. Of course the North Texas region where the trial occurred, is a hotbed of far-right Republicans, willing to embrace and act on the administration’s dog whistles to racism, white supremacy and unconstitutional activities. Then again, as Texan, this is to be expected from the only political party to run Texas for over thirty years, yet continues to blame the other side, for the miserable degradation of all things government services and the near nationally high property taxes that define our once proud state. Texans have lived under draconian, far-right and unconstitutional leadership since I moved here for the Army, in 2005.

"What is evident across this county — where in the 1970s the oilmen-rancher TV drama “Dallas” was filmed — is that extremism has gone mainstream in certain pockets of America. Hard-line sentiments that would have been whispered only years ago are now spoken unabashed. That worries Alonzo Tutson, a Black Independent, who said right-wing radicals here are everyday people who say “howdy to you at soccer practice. They just blend right in.”

Texas was home to three dozen of the 377 alleged insurrectionists arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, tied with Pennsylvania for the most of any state, according to a study by terrorism experts at the University of Chicago. Of Texans charged, 20 live in half a dozen rapidly diversifying blue counties around Houston and Dallas, including several in McKinney’s Collin County."

- In North Texas, schism deepens between GOP moderates and ‘skewed’ hard-liners
- Los Angeles Times
- By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
- May 10, 2021

As you can see on the map below from CSIS, a prominent and highly credible national security think tank. There is a cluster of dots around the north Dallas area.

The official press release from DOJ reads like science fiction, and is so full of blatant falsehoods as to be laughable, were the lives of nine Americans not at risk. To be fair, those sentenced did commit limited vandalism and brought fireworks that those inside the ICE detention facility could hear and see during the planned protest. One individual did fire a rifle at a law enforcement officer who had drawn his weapon to threaten protesters. These crimes are legitimate for prosecution, but the rest of DOJs claims are as mentioned, “fiction.” Most were sentenced to fifty years in federal prison for vandalism and fireworks, plus having some pamphlets about the protest. Everyone that the White House has pardoned so far, has committed far worse crimes.

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The US District Judge for Northern Texas who sentenced the defendants, also is the one who had declared a mistrial during jury selection, because the defendant’s lawyer was wearing a non-visible tee-shirt under her black blazer, with the faces of Dr. Martin Luther King and Shirley Chisholm on it. Any Texan would recognize such behavior as typical for many Texan judges, but this doesn’t make it right either. What is more infuriating for those that understand the law and the political landscape under this Republican administration whether in Texas or nationally, is that they are operating in the case regarding alleged “Antifa” terrorists, falsely. Antifa is not a terrorist movement and there is zero credible evidence to assert that they are. I wrote an entire deep-dive on this specific issue, back on October 13th of 2025.

"Now, let’s bring things up to where we are today. The current GOP regime that fully controls all three branches of our government, has been pushing ridiculous and unsupported battle cries with terms like, radical left, woke, extremists, terrorists and now most importantly, insurrectionists. In the mind of the GOP and their voters, anyone not as extreme right-wing as they are, are Antifa. Trump’s AG, William Barr tried this in Portland during the George Floyd protests, sending in all types of law enforcement from across the executive branch. After his failed operations, Barr had to publicly admit, that there was no organized Antifa, nor were they a threat. This was largely due to the then Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray making a public statement that dispelled any evidence of an organized Antifa. Yet the Republican lies and conspiracy theories survive, and are now bolstered by even more egregious lies." 

- Antifa, the GOP's made-up Boogieman
- Truth about Threats
- Paul Cobaugh
- October 13, 2025

This current false prosecution of ICE protesters, reinforces the administration’s false claim that Antifa is a terrorist organization. If we allow them to get away with this, every single American will be subject to arrest and long prison terms, just for offering public dissent against this autocratic administration and their precious GOP. I won’t pretend to speak for all of you, but I will gladly claim the title of Antifa. If this label was good enough for every single American that fought in WW II, it’s sure as hell good enough for me to espouse. In fact, I believe it’s time for a moment taken from the movie Spartacus. In the movie, when Rome demands to know which of the thousands of their captives were Spartacus, the rebellion leader, all prisoners claimed to be Spartacus. A dream of mine would be to rename the resistance, to Antifa. They cannot arrest all of us. After all, we are standing up to Republican fascism.

"Over the past few months, during his agency’s chaotic crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, the U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino has worn an unusual uniform: a wide-lapel greatcoat with brass buttons and stars along one sleeve. It looks like it was taken right off the shoulders of a Wehrmacht officer in the 1930s. Bovino’s choice of garment is more than tough-guy cosplay (German media noted the aesthetic immediately). The coat symbolizes a trend: The Republicans, it seems, have a bit of a Nazi problem.

By this, I mean that some Republicans are deploying Nazi imagery and rhetoric, and espouse ideas associated with the Nazi Party during its rise to power in the early 1930s. A few recent examples: An ICE lawyer linked to a white-supremacist social-media account that praised Hitler was apparently allowed to return to federal court. Members of the national Young Republicans organization were caught in a group chat laughing about their love for Hitler. Vice President J. D. Vance shrugged off that controversy, instead of condemning the growing influence of anti-Semites in his party.

- The Republican Party Has a Nazi ProblemHow did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?
- The Atlantic
- By Tom Nichols
- February 26, 2026

Back to our challenge of preventing our arrests as Antifa, just because we legally exercise our First Amendment right to free speech. This case and another very similar in Minnesota against ICE protesters, are the first that use the “Antifa terrorism” label in open court. Should this succeed, we must be prepared to act in defense of our constitutional rights. Remember, all January 6th protesters who did far worse than those accused in Texas and Minnesota, are now free, pardoned by Trump, and without objection by the GOP. J6 rioters and violent extremists, expressed the beliefs of several legitimate far-right domestic terror organizations, such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, etc. We all watched these felon’s actions and expressions of far-right violent extremism on our TV screens, phones, laptops, iPads, local papers and on and on and on. Yet in the case of those recently sentenced, there is no such proof, only dishonest accusations.

"Proud Boys

The Proud Boys were formed by Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media, in 2016 during the U.S. presidential election. Proud Boys consider themselves “Western chauvinists” who romanticize a traditional, male-dominated version of Western culture. While the Proud Boys vehemently deny adhering to a racist ideology, the organization is deeply rooted in white nationalism and misogyny. As of December 31, 2021, 83 Proud Boys members and sympathizers have allegedly carried out ideologically motivated crimes in the United States. This number includes 54 Proud Boys defendants who participated in the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. Proud Boys defendants have come from 25 states and the District of Columbia, including 14 from Florida, 14 from New York, 7 from Washington, and 6 from Pennsylvania. Using auxiliary data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) project, these infographics provide information on the characteristics of U.S. Proud Boys defendants and their crimes."

- Proud Boys Crimes and Characteristics
- START, Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the US center of excellence for peer-reviewed research on Terrorism.
- Jensen, Michael, Elizabeth Yates, and Sheehan Kane. 2022. "Proud Boys Crimes and Characteristics." College Park, MD: START

Oath Keepers

"Abstract: On January 6, 2021, 21 members of the Oath Keepers are alleged to have played a critical role in a wide-ranging conspiracy to storm the U.S. Capitol and disrupt the certification of the 2020 general election. Since its inception in 2009, the group has used a warped sense of patriotism, loose enforcement of laws surrounding paramilitary activity, and America’s founding revolutionary spirit to justify anti-government mobilization. It consistently walked the edge of political violence before taking part in the January 6 insurrection. While the group claims to be “guardians of the republic,” its principal target is the government itself—particularly entities representing perceived federal government overreach and vectors for tyrannical forces to suppress Americans’ natural rights. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a subtle but significant shift occurred in the group’s ideological focus, which saw left-wing political ideologies and social justice movements assume equal footing as targets for the group’s ire. Over the next four years, the group consistently mobilized armed responses, often posing as “security operations” to perceived threats, and increasingly expressed the belief that the United States was on the brink of or already in a state of civil war."

- The Oath Keepers and Their Role in the January 6 Insurrection
- Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Matthew Kriner, Jon Lewis
- December 2021, Volume 14, Issue 10

Three Percenters

The U.S. far-right milieu is not monolithic. It can be divided into at least five sections: racist extremism, namely white nationalism/supremacy; anti-government extremism; nativist extremism; anti-abortion extremism; and male supremacy.

The anti-government movement, which is the most relevant to this brief, can be categorized into six further sub-sections: militias, tax protesters, sovereign citizens, constitutional sheriffs, far-right segments of survivalist or “prepper” communities, and conspiracy propagandists.

The Three Percenter movement is a subset of the larger far-right anti-government militia movement, organized primarily around intense fear and loathing of the U.S. federal government. Although fixated on the federal government, anti-government extremists use coded rhetoric that also expresses anxiety toward historically disenfranchised racial/ethnic/religious minorities. Their ideology and narratives
are malleable enough to identify additional perceived enemies, including Muslims. They also often attempt to portray themselves as armed protectors of the U.S. Constitution against tyrants-in-waiting (the U.S. federal government) and various collaborators (anti-fascists [“antifa”], Black Lives Matter, George Soros, Muslims, and others)."

- The Three Percenters: A Look Inside an Anti-Government Militia
- START, Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the US center of excellence for peer-reviewed research on Terrorism.
- Beutel, Alejandro and Daryl Johnson. 2021

These last quotes come from the very pinnacle of US Terrorism analysts. I posted excerpts from the three groups I noted earlier, along with access to the research. I wanted readers to know what justifies an organization’s labeling as a terrorist or violent extremist organization. Next, I will show you what START, the source for two of those groups say about Antifa. This way everyone can compare and contrast to see just how insane it is to label anti administration protesters as Antifa and as “domestic terrorists.”

Is Antifa a Terrorist Group?

Abstract:

"Starting in 2016, a number of protests and physical confrontations aimed at individuals and groups associated with right wing politics in the United States have been attributed to an ill-defined entity called “antifa”: short for anti-fascist. A high profile example took place in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11-12, 2017. During two days of conflict and violence, anti right wing protesters clashed with right wing supporters. During the second day of the confrontation, a right-wing supporter drove a car into a crowd of protesters, killing one person and injuring 35 others. While many antifa supporters see it as a defense against right wing extremism, some on the right view supporters instead as terrorists. I tackle these issues in this essay by applying the guidelines of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to determine whether the actions by antifa supporters during the Charlottesville incident constitute terrorism. I conclude that while the events share many characteristics of terrorist attacks, they do not include all of the elements of terrorism required by the GTD. I also question whether antifa can be considered to constitute a “group” at this point in time."

-  Is Antifa a Terrorist Group?
- START, Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the US center of excellence for peer-reviewed research on Terrorism.
- LaFree, Gary. 2018

The bottom-line is, there is no Antifa organization, but there are a set of beliefs that call for the defense of citizens from fascist violence. They do not start fights. Their actions are deterrents and defensive, only when required to protect innocent citizens from far-right thuggery. This administration and their sycophantic Republican-led Congress, don’t care about truth and evidence. Trump and the GOP label Americans as Antifa or domestic terrorists associated with Antifa. Such a label is nothing more than a tool employed by fascist leadership to justify rounding up dissenters. By their definition, everyone in the resistance is Antifa. As for me, I’m proud to accept the label. Being Antifa, has historically been the honorable position of all Americans, that respect our constitution and our history.

Labeling legal dissent, domestic terrorism is quite literally, straight out of the Nazi playbook for pre-war Germany. The German word for this is, Gleichschaltung, which translates roughly to Nazification in English.

"Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over all aspects of Germany. It is otherwise known as coordination or Nazification. The process primarily took place between 1933-1934.

The Nazi’s started with the Civil Service , issuing the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service on the 7 April 1933. This act legalised removing anyone of non-Ayran descent from the civil service.

In the judicial system specifically, this act removed any judges that were deemed non-compliant with Nazi laws or principles. This act was reinforced by the German Civil Service code of 26 January 1937, which retired any judges or judicial official who would not intervene in cases and rule in favour of the Nazis. The People’s Court, a court created by the Nazis in April 1934 with judges chosen specifically for their Nazi beliefs, replaced the Supreme Court. With these measures in place, the Nazification of the judicial system was complete.

Gleichschaltung was applied across every possible aspect of government policy."

- Gleichschaltung
- The Holocaust Explained

Today’s GOP is using Hitler’s playbook on to consolidate power in the Executive Branch without interference from any other element of government. To be clear, those who know WW II history well, long ago recognized the GOP’s Project 2025, as a modified Gleichschaltung, with several elements being nearly verbatim from the pre-war Nazi playbook. Take a look at some of the examples below from the Holocaust Encyclopedia and you will easily see how closely the administration is following Hitler’s strategy.

• Using Emergency Decrees to Govern

In July 1930, Hindenburg and Brüning issued an emergency decree to enact a deflationary budget despite parliament’s opposition. They used Article 48 of the German constitution. Article 48 permitted the German president to take measures bypassing parliamentary consent in cases of national emergency. Parliament, in line with its constitutional right, voted to force Hindenburg to rescind the emergency decree. In response, Hindenburg and Brüning dissolved parliament and called new special parliamentary elections.

• Nazi Party Disruption and Obstruction in Parliament

In parliament, Nazi deputies were deliberately disruptive and rowdy. They refused to support any of the Brüning government’s measures and regularly called votes of no-confidence. They derailed parliamentary sessions by introducing irrelevant points of order.

Brüning attempted to work around this situation. With Hindenburg’s support, he repeatedly resorted to Article 48 to issue emergency decrees. He enacted economic measures that did little to relieve unemployment or help those in poverty. As a result, the Communists began referring to him as the “hunger chancellor” (Hungerkanzler). Brüning also sent parliament into long periods of recess.

• Undermining Public Order With Political Violence

By 1931, political violence on Germany’s streets had become unmanageable. This was in large part because of the increase in paramilitary groups affiliated with parties from across the political spectrum. The Nazi Party’s paramilitary, the SA, was especially radical and violent. SA men often abused Jews and smashed the windows of Jewish-owned businesses. They regularly brawled with and even killed their political opponents, especially Communists. In turn, scores of Nazis were killed by opposing groups. The German government and police forces failed to contain the political violence. This further undermined many Germans’ faith in the Weimar Republic.

Summary

This essay is already longer than I anticipated and I am grateful for those who’ve come along to the end. Today’s work is in my opinion, something that is necessary for us to understand, if those of us in the resistance are to remain out of prison and effective through the midterms. Should the domestic terrorism charges and allegations of Antifa as a domestic terror organization stand against those unfairly sentenced yesterday by Judge Mark T. Pittman, every last one of us is in danger of arrest and imprisonment. Of course, our currently cowardly mainstream media isn’t covering this story well, so we must share this serious threat with each other. It’s too late to turn our backs on the republic and save ourselves by remaining silent, but this is exactly what our administration of fascists wishes for. If we stay quiet, the GOP wins and we lose our republic. It is not more complicated than that.

As I have noted often, my oath to the nation when I joined the military was, “to protect and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.” I have no choice but to fight on. From what I’ve witnessed from the resistance patriots, I believe that you will soldier on as well. I’m personally humbled and grateful for everyone that will stand against tyranny, and for our constitution. In my book… every one of you is not only a hero, but the very definition of what it means to be a patriot. Thank you all.

Onward,

Publius Redux

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TAT readers,

Welcome to your weekend. Today’s essay, Part X in my series regarding the war with Iran, captures some of my deep frustration with our failed leadership and the near fatal, self-inflicted wound to our national security. America has enjoyed unilateral global superpower primacy since the end of the Cold War, or at least we did until Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Now, two years into his second administration he has in my professional opinion, undermined our national security and global status to the point that there’s a good argument to be made, that we are now, number two in the world.

1. Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

2. Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

3. Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

4. Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

5. Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

6. Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

7. Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

8. The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

9. Part IX, the Iran War: Hold your horses everyone, a yet unsigned MOU is not a peace deal

As a nation, we once saw the Soviet Union, now Russia and Xi’s China as our most capable and dangerous competitors. Until roughly six months into Russia’s genocidally intended invasion of Ukraine, Putin was Xi’s peer. After Putin’s invasion began its long descent into irrelevance as a global military, Xi quietly began supporting Putin, as did Iran, N. Korea, India tangentially and a whole host of other states operating in Putin and Xi’s spheres of influence. Now that Trump, his administration and the GOP have surrendered to one of the globe’s most heinous regimes, our global power status looks only slightly less humiliating than Putin’s thrashing in Ukraine.

To rub salt into our wounds, 13 American service-members are KIA, killed in action with hundreds of others, WIA/ wounded in action. Across the region, there are another fifty plus thousand dead and wounded from allied nations and other nations in the region. The cost to date, suspected to be in the neighborhood of eighty billion American tax dollars, despite the administration and Pentagon’s claims of far less. Even though they claim a smaller number, they are still demanding as of this week, another 80 billion for the war they falsely claim is over. If one considers the intangible ramifications such as economics, commerce, allies etc., it’s not even close to being over. Any national security professional with deep experience in the region will tell you the same. Humbly, I submit that I am one such professional.

In addition to my deep military experience in the region, I also have a fifty-year love affair with Israel, a daughter living there, whose mother, my first-wife was born there. We married while serving together in the US Army 74-77. In Judaism, children are the religion of their mother and my children were raised in Jewish traditions. We’ve traveled there as a family and I’ve walked among the diverse Israeli population from north to south and east to west. Despite this “love affair,” I sternly forbid myself from exhibiting any bias when it comes to professional analysis of national security situations in the region, and especially in regard to Israel’s behavior. I began writing what would become more than twenty essays assessing the war in Gaza, only a day after the October 7th massacre by a genocidal Hamas-led terrorist army, sponsored, trained and equipped, by Iran. I also named Bibi’s far-right Israeli administration as one of the 6 nations or organizations, responsible for the October 7th massacre.

As recent readers know, this is my 10th in this series about the Iran war. I call things as I see them so that I can offer all of you, a picture of these deeply troubling and interrelated events, as clearly and accurately as possible. The point is, the region is in many ways, my backyard. I have learned over decades, that the only solutions to the seemingly endless strive, is to level the playing field with truth. Only then can sustainable solutions be identified and pursued. The Camp David Accords are a prime example. The situation we are now faced with, is negotiating the terms of our surrender to Iran and Xi. If we do not see this situation clearly and negotiate accordingly, we’ll lose far more than just this war. To date, most of the White House’s and Pentagon’s dishonest pressers, along with spineless western reporting, has denied American voters the ability to gain a clearer perspective. How this war ends, will have a long-lasting effect on the US, our allies and the stability of the world. We must all understand the risks.

Next, let’s look at where we are, what to expect in the near future.

There is no way to accurately predict where this MOU nonsense is going. The fourteen points of the document that we’ve seen, are functionally ambiguous, which means this document, is little more than a handshake. As noted in Part IX, Iran and by extension, Xi, are in the driver’s seat. As an outlier, Netanyahu has taken on the role of “spoiler” to anyone’s intentions. To be blunt, the MOU, reads more like the terms of our surrender to both. The truth is, there is little faith in expert analytical circles that this MOU will last at all, especially since the fourteen point document is largely Iran’s wish list. It humiliates the US, leaves Israel unsecured and comes with a requirement to pay Iran three hundred billion dollars in reparations.

"Making peace is more difficult than starting wars. President Donald Trump has found this to be painfully true over the past months.

Now that a ceasefire arrangement, or memorandum of understanding (MoU), has been made public, it is possible to measure what has been agreed against the standards of international law and practice. 

The 14-point document accommodates virtually the full catalogue of Iranian demands, which would have seemed entirely unrealistic when made during the active conflict. The US is losing its key pressure points, whether economic or military. And Iran’s nuclear obligations are yet to be determined. Other war aims, like stopping Iranian support for proxy forces, do not feature in the instrument."

- The US–Iran memorandum of understanding nods to international law. Can that be taken seriously?
- Chatham House
- Marc Weller
- June 19th, 2026

In straightforward terms, this MOU is actually a 60 day ceasefire and expects via negotiation, to solve all of the major issues in two months time. This is a pipe dream at best, insanity at worst. There are major sticking points among the fourteen points on the MOU. The stay on paying Iran tolls for using the Strait is only on hold for 60 days, while they attempt to get all of the Arab Gulf oil states together to finalize a permanent plan. Considering that most of our gulf oil state allies are furious with us at the moment for failing to protect them or in most cases, even warn them of the impending war. OPEC also just suffered the loss of the UAE at the end of April, which somewhat lessens their ability to manage oil prices. There has been tension within OPEC off and on, for years. This is a serious obstacle to getting all of the affected gulf states to agree to much, within the 60 days allotted.

Right from the very first point of the 14, there are landmines. The very first point requires Israel to immediately enter into a ceasefire with Iran’s terrorist army, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel was not even included in the MOU talks, but Trump and the Iranian leadership seem to think they can just dictate her national security without asking. This point has already failed, with Israeli strikes against Hezbollah strongholds already occurring the very next day. Here’s where Bibi holds a powerful “trump card” (pun intended). Iran demands Israeli compliance and Netanyahu so far… isn’t having it. Much as I despise his Trumpishness, his reasoning for eradicating Hezbollah as a functional army next door, is sound.

Point number 6 requiring the US and regional partners to pay 300 billion dollars to Iran for war reparations, is hard to swallow for Americans being hard squeezed by our highest inflation in 3 years. The MOU also calls for relieving Iran of the painful sanctions that have critically hurt her economy for decades. A $300B paycheck along with sanctions relief, is an extraordinary boost to her long-depleted economy. It might be just as accurate to say that should these things come to pass, it will be the rough equivalent of Trump investing in Iran’s future, with our tax dollars.

As long as we are discussing money, Point 11 declares that the US will “unfreeze” restricted Iranian funds roughly estimated to be $100B. The Obama-era JCPOA also included “unfrozen” funds for Iran but in the amount of $1.7B. The great irony of providing Iran all of this cash, is that the IRGC will be a notable benefactor. The IRGC or The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is the most powerful force in Iran that reports directly to the Supreme Leader, not the military high command. They also include the Quds Force, which is the special forces-like organization responsible for terrorizing their adversaries around the world for decades.

"Four senior Iranian sources described how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was uniquely placed to capture a big chunk of any financial rewards that would accrue from sanctions relief, renewed oil exports and foreign investment.

Their central role may also prove to be one of the many obstacles to a deal: with the Guards so firmly enmeshed in Iranian business, their terrorism designation could significantly complicate efforts to free the economy from sanctions."

- Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to win big if US lifts sanctions as part of peace deal
- Times of Israel
- By Parisa Hafezi and ANGUS MCDOWALL
- June 20, 2026

These examples are just the tip-of-the-iceberg but suffice to illustrate how deep a hole Trump and Co. have dug for us all. The old adage about, “the first rule when you have yourself in a hole, is to stop digging” could hardly fit better for this Iran War and surrender debacle by the administration. For all of the words written explaining the MOU of surrender, I don’t believe they will matter in the end. As always, I’m willing to be wrong, but I don’t see this ceasefire holding. In fact, it was already broken within the first 24 hours due to Israeli attacks against targets in Lebanon. Israel continues her fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon although Bibi claims operations against Iran have ceased, unless or if Iran restarts her offensive actions against Israel.

The long-anticipated official signing and meeting in Switzerland on Friday, never materialized, with no reschedule in sight. Trump can’t make up his mind whether he hates Netanyahu or loves him, after saying in a Truth Social Post a couple of days ago that “he had no f#$king judgement” and praising him today as a “great warrior.” If Israel does comply, we all must ask ourselves what Trump promised Israel in exchange for their compliance. In the meantime, we still have roughly 50 thousand troops in the region along with ships, aircraft and other tools of war. The cost to us, the American people simply digs us deeper into a deficit hole, much like it has to the household budgets of working-class Americans all across the nation.

As far as our global national security posture goes, it has diminished significantly in stature since inauguration day but has nosedived since the Iran war began. Don’t forget that when Trump was in China, he asked Xi to use his notable leverage with Iran to work towards a ceasefire. Xi does nothing for free, and based on the reporting of expert observers of the China summit meeting, it appears that Trump is beginning his backpedaling on Taiwan’s defense. He agreed with Xi’s demand to halt the prearranged $14B arms sale to Taiwan. Just recently, Trump has also okayed the sale of our most sophisticated computer chips to China, once considered a line not to be crossed by either party. After Trump approved the sale, the Chinese decided that they don’t want them anyway.

Xi set up Trump to be humiliated by letting him brag about future Nvidia sales to China and then, refused to buy even one single chip. This type of tactic at that level is designed to be a message to the world, regarding who is in charge. It sure as hell isn’t Trump. The official reason given by China for refusing to buy our advanced AI chips was, “that they no longer consider US businesses reliable partners.”

"A recent New York Times headline says it all: “Trump Approved a Nvidia Chip for Sale in China. Beijing Doesn’t Want It.” The administration endured substantial domestic criticism for approving sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to 10 Chinese companies, but because of Beijing’s continuing objections, as of mid-May not a single H200 chip had been sold to Chinese companies. Following his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping—where, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, chip export controls were not a major topic of discussion—U.S. President Donald Trump said China had not bought any H200 chips “because they chose not to. They want to try and develop their own.”

- Ball game’s over—the US is out of the AI chip market in China
- Brookings Institution
- Mark MacCarthy
- June 17, 202

With China now holding such a prominent role in the region, Xi is one step closer to moving his China Dream Strategy forward globally. The massive employment of our most critical munitions in Iran, meant that we had to take prepositioned munitions from the Asian theater to keep up operations. This makes us far more vulnerable in the Pacific. Our diminished strength makes Taiwan and our allies less safe. The way Trump behaved in Europe at the G7, and Pete Hegseth berated NATO allies this week are little changed from them first taking office for his second term. The administration has treated our allies, especially NATO with utter contempt and arrogance. We are nearly friendless now in the world, depleting our limited national security resources as fast as we jettison allies. Like the early 17th century prose by John Donne, “no man is an island,” so goes with nations.

I wish I could offer everyone better news in this essay. It’s not in the cards. We’ll all be living in uncertainty unless adults begin advocating for the US rather than our useless and corrupt Vice President and real estate wannabe diplomats like Kushner and Witkoff. I can hardly be more serious regarding my concerns for our national security. As much as this war demonstrates the criminal negligence of our leadership, it is only a symptom of a far more aggressive cancer, called the Trump administration and Trump-era Republican Party.

We’ve now bombed 9 different countries since inauguration day, lost a war to Iran, threatened to attack our NATO allies over Greenland, illegally invaded a sovereign nation, whose oil we now steal, are illegally blockading Cuba, etc., etc., etc. The administration is a cult of maniacal conquest without having ever read history. If they had, they would know that it doesn’t end well for anyone. November is our chance to at least slow the Trump/GOP cancer threatening our values and making us vulnerable to global predators. We can do this, so long as we tap into the true American principles that live inside us.

I’ll try for something more uplifting in the next essay.

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today, we’ll explore the relatively limited information that is slipping out into the publicly available news about a so-called “peace deal” with Iran.” Until there’s more in writing we won’t know the full extent, but from our current vantage point, it would appear that the US, Gulf states and the region will end up economically, and strategically worse off than they were before the war’s February 28th start date. The situation remains fluid and still fraught with peril, especially regarding Israel and their ongoing operations against Hezbollah and Hamas. In fact, over the weekend, the Bibi and Trump bromance experienced a vulgar spat, emanating of course from Trump.

"US President Donald Trump lashed out at Israel on Sunday after the IDF struck a Hezbollah target in Beirut, angering Tehran and potentially risking the deal Washington is trying to finalize with the Islamic Republic.

Reportedly accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no fucking judgment,” the president also declared that the IDF should be prevented from carrying out any more attacks on any part of Lebanon moving forward, not just Beirut. The suggestion was said to raise concerns among Israeli officials that the prospective US-Iran deal could sharply curb Israel’s military freedom of action.

“This morning’s attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a peace deal with Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social."

- Trump says Netanyahu ‘has no f**king judgment’ after Beirut strike – report
- Times of Israel
- By Lazar Berman and Nava Freiberg
- 14 June 2026, 10:38 pm

That this agreement was announced just prior to the G7 in France this week, is no mystery. The Trump administration is taking a beating all around the world for so severely disrupting the global economy, something that we here in the states fully understand as well. When monitoring national security issues around the world, I recommend reading credible local or regional news, to add a great deal of clarity, that cannot be found in US and some western reporting. This is especially true under the current administration, who has leaned hard on all US news services, networks and publications to only report positive news about the administration. This keeps a significant amount of critical information out of our hands here at home.

Today I will try and put together a clearer picture out of the slow trickle of information from a widely disparate group of sources. As a spoiler alert, it would appear that we’ve lost this war and are attempting to achieve a face-saving exit. More on this later in today’s essay. Before beginning today’s perspective, I have also listed below, the links to the eight-part series I wrote the first few weeks of the war. For those with interest in these links, please consider them deep background reading. There are never easy explanations for any major event in the Middle East and other closely related regions. A little background is essential for a better understanding the complexity of the challenges that lie before us. As you can see below in Part VII, I declared that we had already lost the war all the way back on April 11th. Now things are even worse.

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

• Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

• Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

• Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

• The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

Onward

Oh the web of lies that this administration has told about the Iran war. We’ve experienced countless announcements from the White House, most often oriented towards insider-trading opportunities for those close to the administration. The stock market, oil prices and a whole bevy of other commodities have bounced around like a pinball, due to those announcements. Still, the alleged “ceasefire” that really wasn’t, began back on April 8th. In the interim, the world economy has experienced a notable and occasionally severe wound, all of which was preventable ,had the Trump administration made even a cursory attempt to strategize and plan the operation all the way through an exit strategy. They didn’t and now… the global economy and national security situations will remain painful and chaotic for the foreseeable future.

Let’s begin with what we do know, or that which has at least been reported in credible reporting, here at home and abroad. So, what do we call this alleged agreement? Is it an MOU/ Memorandum of Understanding or any of the other names the administration has used, such as a “peace deal,” the beginning of a lasting peace, an agreement and so on and so forth. As you can see from the page one headlines from the Times of Israel below, things don’t sound nearly as “done” as one would believe.

Even the Trump administration can’t get their messaging together. Trump claimed the MOU would be signed yesterday for his birthday. J.D. Vance, claims it’s already signed but most international audiences have been told that it won’t be signed until this coming Friday, in Switzerland. Typical Trump administration chaos where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. For the time being, I will believe in the Friday in Switzerland story.

Most government spokesmen at home and in the region, also claim the MOU includes putting an end to the wars that began after Hamas’ terrorists stormed across the border into southern Israel on October 7th, 2023, raping, murdering, torturing and taking hostages. Israel who is central to the entire MOU, currently claims that it will continue to defend herself against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas’ in Gaza.

To further complicate the picture, the Jerusalem Times reports an hour or so ago, that the IDF and Mossad do not concur with any such agreement. Israel was excluded from the talks leading up to the MOU. Without Israel’s compliance, the MOU as expressed in reporting, is DOA or “dead on arrival.” My professional opinion is that excluding Israel was nearly as foolish as the first Trump administration excluding the Afghan government from the talks leading up to Trump’s abandonment of Afghanistan, when he signed a treaty with the Taliban to end the war.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera, reports that the MOU is built around 14-points but without any confirmation regarding what those points pertain to. It’s important here to remember that the western side of the Persian Gulf are Sunni Muslims and that Iran, is Shia. This difference means a great deal within Islam in general, but acutely so in the Gulf and greater Middle East. What is called the Sunni/ Shia split dates back to 632 AD and has grown far more contentious with the passage of time. In other words, there is no love lost between the two. Also Qatar, like the rest of the Sunni side has experienced a great deal of pain from Iranian attacks, simply because the Sunnis have largely been aligned with the West, including the US.

The issue of Sunni vs. Shia has another problem for the US and the West. The Houthis are from Yemen and although a different version of Shia Islam, are allied with Iran. That they are located in Yemen at the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, that controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. This is a trump card that Iran still has in their pocket should they need it. What I mean by this is, even with the Strait of Hormuz open, should the Houthis again decide to close the Bab-al-Mandab Straits, oil still could not reach the west without transiting all the way around the Southern tip of Africa, thereby slowing recovery and increasing the costs to consumers, due to adding significant transit time and fuel.

"Three days following the October 7 attack on Israel, Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi warned that if the United States intervenes in the Hamas-Israel War directly, the group will respond by taking military action. In mid-October, U.S. officials announced that the USS Carney downed several Houthi cruise missiles and drones fired toward Israel. The Houthis continued to launch several rounds of missiles and drones until it officially announced entry into the war to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on October 31."

"On November 19, the Houthis hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea and have since attacked at least thirty-three others with drones, missiles, and speed boats as of late January 2024. As a result, major shipping companies have stopped using the Red Sea—through which almost 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes—and have rerouted to take longer and costlier journeys around Southern Africa instead. The situation has resulted in heightened shipping and insurance costs, stoking fears of a renewed cost-of-living crisis."

- Conflict in Yemen and the Red Sea
- Council on Foreign Relations
- By the Center for Preventative Action
- Updated, April, 2026

A week ago, the Houthis threatened to again close the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, in support of Iran’s war with the US and Israel. If this occurs, the global oil supply from the gulf, will continue to be partially disrupted. To add to this, we must talk about China and their now dominant role in the region. China has deeply invested infrastructure projects in the region, as a part of their BRI/ Belt and Road Initiative. Xi has a Naval Base right next to ours in Djibouti just outside of the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, which is the entry point for vessels using the Suez Canal. China is rehabilitating the Suez while controlling ports all across the Mediterranean, including the part at the northern end too. China also has a role in the primary Israeli port at Haifa. The last I checked, China actually owns, manages or is building some 60 ports all around the perimeter of Africa.

To make matters worse for the West, China is more deeply invested infrastructure in all of Africa than we or our allies are cumulatively. The reason that we care about China in regards to the MOU is because, China is the big winner in this war. Last month, Trump went to China and asked Xi for assistance in putting pressure on his Iranian allies to wind down the war. Whenever tough, powerful autocrats like Xi do a favor for someone, there is an expectation of something in return. During that trip, Trump agreed to sell China our most sophisticated computer chips, that we’d protected for a very long time. As I have written previously, at this moment, I believe that China just may be the world’s premier superpower, not the US. Trump going, hat-in-hand to Xi for a favor, pretty much seals the deal.

"Among Middle Eastern countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq topped the list of Chinese project destinations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative engagement in Saudi Arabia stood at $19.8 billion, the third highest globally, and Iraq accounted for $4.5 billion. Saudi Arabia also saw the largest Chinese engagement in green energy last year, worth approximately $5.2 billion. Total Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investment in Saudi Arabia from 2013 through last year reached $40 billion, ranking second only to Pakistan.

Kazakhstan was the single largest recipient of Belt and Road Initiative investment in 2025, with about $25.8 billion, followed by Egypt at $10.2 billion, according to Green Finance & Development Center estimates.

The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, is Beijing’s flagship global infrastructure drive to expand trade routes and deepen its economic presence across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, spanning transport, energy, ports, and increasingly, green and digital projects."

- China’s Foreign Investment Jumps as Beijing Bypasses Iran and RussiaAmong Middle Eastern Countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq Topped the List of Chinese ‘Belt and Road’ Project Destinations
- Middle East Forum
- By Dalga Khatinoglu
- Feb 07, 2026

As we grow closer to the end of this shorter than usual essay, I want to encourage readers to try and see the “big picture” regarding the ongoing geo-strategic shift. Seeing it holistically will help you see just how poor of a strategic decision it was for the US to embark on the path to open warfare with Iran. Don’t get me wrong, the Iranian regime at the onset of the war, was and has long been a cruel, ideologically corrupt threat to global stability. To make matters worse, they’ve also done plenty of Putin’s and Xi’s dirty work. Iran was Putin’s most important supplier of high tech weaponry and other war materials. If there’s any good that we have achieved throughout this fiasco, it’s that it has taken a big bite out of what Putin needs and now can’t get.

I won’t belabor this particular essay but wanted to give everyone some clarity to the bits and pieces of news dribbling out of official sources. So where do we stand now? Well, Pakistan, the mediators for the MOU talks, still claims the signing on Friday in Switzerland. The Strait will slowly begin opening. There are plenty of mines to deal with in the strait along with a list of other issues to address before ships can safely transit the Strait of Hormuz. Most global experts claim that it will take up to a year, just to get close to where we were at the outset of the war. This means slowly decreasing but still higher than normal fuel prices. That makes all goods and services more expensive as well, including our groceries, again due to added fuel costs.

As for assessing what little we know about the deal, the bottom line is that we’re worse off than when we started and much worse off than had the last Trump administration not torn up the JCPOA or original Iran deal from 2016. We’ve been at increased risk ever since Trump removed us from the Obama-era deal, which also included China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia. Now China sits in the proverbial catbird’s seat. They are not combatants, are serving as enablers of peace, have the preponderance of influence with the primary combatants, more to gain from peace, and deep partnerships all across the region.

To further our self-inflicted woes, the US has come through this in a manner not unsimilar to the humiliation Putin is suffering from losing to Ukraine. True, we’ve had some battlefield successes but could not unilaterally dislodge the hardline regime without a long and costly ground war. Our humiliation is not nearly as dear as that heaped onto Russian forces, but it’s still quite embarrassing. At the end of such a conflict, we’d be far weaker than we are now. Remember, we have expended so many of our stockpiled munitions, especially those taken from INDO-PACOM, the command in charge of the Pacific and South, SE and SW Asia. This gives China an advantage militarily as that it will take a couple of years or so to rebuild our supply of those munitions. It not only makes Taiwan far more vulnerable, but our allies in the region too.

At the end of the day, China’s dominance is growing. Putin owes Xi as does whoever is running Iran these days. India cannot compete unless she finds a way to remain non-aligned in a region increasingly managed by her age-old and often bitter rival, China. I actually feel for our friends in India due to being between a rock and a hard place. Modi must have oil and with Xi having some leverage over Russia and Iran, India is in a pickle.

If you remember nothing else from this essay, just know that this foolhardy and foolish war has cost the US enormous respectability while also calling into question our military readiness and expertise. We lost or have deeply wounded our former partnerships among Arab Gulf oil states as well as our NATO allies. The embarrassment of very limited success, having to ask Xi for help and the shedding of more allies, has in my opinion, edged the US into a dead heat with China for global preeminence or even into a second place position as a superpower.

The war, the alleged MOU and being able to sustain the peace, are all in question at the moment. We’ll probably not see the MOU’s points until Friday after the planned signing in Switzerland. I’m not expecting any real surprises though and from the way things look at the moment, outside of no more deaths, I don’t see any significantly positive outcomes.

My very best for your week and back later in the week with a new essay.

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is in my opinion, about one of the most dangerous aspects of the Seditious Republican Party and their chums in the oligarchy, that are aggressively censoring all Americans in one way or another. Here’s the premise; our founders expected citizens and residents to be well and accurately informed as a foundational aspect of being a responsible citizen. In the entire Trump/ MAGA era, the Republican Party has been perpetually driving a stake through the heart of the very truth that those brilliant and courageous founders expected us to have access to. If we do not take the actions required to lay our boots against the backside of cowardly mainstream media, the music and entertainment industry cowards, tech and social media platforms, as well as the tsunami of foreign influence, there will be no truth left to inform us. If this continues, there will no longer be an American republic.

I’m beyond fed up with the “fake news” GOP and their sycophantic base. They are pointing a gun directly at the First Amendment, the embodiment of our most closely held constitutional rights. Law will not protect us, nor the unfulfilled promises of social media and AI purveyors claiming their only interest is “free speech.” Their commitment to free speech is as laughable as the current version of the Republican Party being the party of “family values.” As any person with sound common-sense knows, an absence of facts deprives us all of not only truth but America’s future.

To be clear, my profession of supporting and defending our national security via ethical influence, is far too complicated for one essay. Today I will present just the overview of censorship and should there be further interest, I will begin writing a short series of essays that flush out today’s overview in greater depth. I was planning on writing that series anyway for the IWI or Irregular Warfare Institute, where I am an advisor, but believe that it is more important at this critical juncture of American History to present the truth to my fellow Americans. Without the explosion of the so-called “fake news,” supported by Russia, this administration which their party has wielded as a bludgeon against every single American, there would have been no Trump-era. In order to maintain the power they have accumulated in our government, they have turned censorship into a nuclear weapon that destroys the very truth we require to make the sound decisions which sustain the republic.

Some of this essay will necessarily go down some technical and legal rabbit holes however, I will do all possible to thread the needle of understanding, by writing with understanding for all, rather than the professional community I originally was going to write for. It’s that important for our future. I’ve long written professionally and privately, that I firmly believe that immoral and adversarial influence operations were the most perilous threat to American democracy. The Republican Party in and preceding the Trump/ MAGA era, has easily proved my beliefs. Censorship in the hand of tyrants, is part of those influence operations and ground zero for the acute threat that could end 250 years of our style and system of government. President Lincoln spoke eloquently in the final words of his iconic Gettysburg Address regarding our citizen’s duty to the cause of liberty.

" that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

- The Gettysburg Address
- President Abraham Lincoln
- November 19th, 1863

What is censorship anyway?

There are so many comments in social media and our news feeds these days as uncertain as most Americans, as to what censorship means legally or operationally under our constitution and legal frameworks. Let’s clear this up, right up front. First of all, I’ll begin with a description from the esteemed ALA or American Library Association. Yes, the ALA has been a tireless warrior in support of our First Amendment, largely by fighting unconstitutional book bans. Their tireless efforts to uphold the one amendment that the current administration consistently violates, is critical to defining who we are as Americans. Here are a handful of the foundational points about censorship in America.

1. The First Amendment within our Bill of Rights

Amendment I

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

- The Bill of Rights: A Transcription
- National Archives

2. With very few and very narrow exceptions, it is illegal for the government to censor speech. The legality of censorship is oriented almost exclusively towards limiting government to interfere with our constitutionally guaranteed free speech. The First Amendment only pertains to government censorship, but there are some extremely narrow exceptions. In fact, on rare occasions, there may actually be times when censorship benefits us all regarding national security. The question that’s relevant here, is that this administration has become like the old tale about, “the boy who cried wolf,” because their noxious claims of “national emergencies” are false… every single time. This invalidates them from employing any of those narrow exceptions for their brutal agenda. The First Amendment concerns more than freedom of speech and there isn’t one word in the entire amendment that the current administration hasn’t walked on with muddy boots. They have and continue to violate everything within the First Amendment.

   Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

   Content based Regulation
   
   "As a general matter, government may not regulate speech “because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” 1 “It is rare that a regulation restricting speech because of its content will ever be permissible.” 2 The constitutionality of content-based regulation is determined by a compelling interest test derived from equal protection analysis: the government “must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and is narrowly drawn to achieve that end.” 3 Narrow tailoring in the case of fully protected speech requires that the government “choose[ ] the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest.” 4 Application of this test ordinarily results in invalidation of the regulation.5"
   
   - Content based Regulation
   - LII, Legal Information Institute
   - Cornell Law School

   

3. I greatly appreciate ALA’s definition of censorship

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   "Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that some individuals, groups, or government officials find objectionable or dangerous.  Would-be censors try to use the power of the state to impose their view of what is truthful and appropriate, or offensive and objectionable, on everyone else. Censors pressure public institutions, like libraries, to suppress and remove information they judge inappropriate or dangerous from public access, so that no one else has the chance to read or view the material and make up their own minds about it. The censor wants to prejudge materials for everyone.  It is no more complicated than someone saying, “Don’t let anyone read this book, or buy that magazine, or view that film, because I object to it!”
   
   - What is Censorship?
   - American Library Association

4. Under the Republican leadership in government, the unconstitutional and illegal manner in which they censor Americans, is not always overt. They employ a wide variety of tactics, strategies and partnerships outside of their official government purview to do their dirty work, therefore complicating some aspects of the legal restraints they long ago ignored. Just because they can find a legal loophole to make their actions technically “legal,” doesn’t mean they are adhering to the intent of our constitution or the spirit of the law.

   

Every single American is now being influenced in a manner that either censors what they see, read, watch or hear, or promotes the ideology of Sedition and fake-patriotism. Whoever and wherever you are, you are being manipulated and it’s really that simple. So if you’re like me and an American raised on the sanctity of our republic and the ideals it represents, you are undoubtedly deeply offended that our government tolerates and willfully deploys influence operations against us. Yes, censorship is part of influence campaigns.

Oh and by the way… not one of us that uses digital technology at home or at work, has any more secrets. Our vehicles, homes, shopping, phones, TVs and anything digital at home or where you venture outside of your home, is spying on you. That data goes to enormous data owners, like Amazon or FB for example, who then use this data to target you in order to exploit your wallet, regardless of whether you need a product or service, or not. This administration and their deplorable tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and more, know everything about our lives due to their data thefts. DOGE isn’t the only criminal though, and the data they stole, violates our Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

- Search and Seizure
- Constitution Center.org

These points above are the immovable pieces on the battlefield against GOP influence campaigns and as this essay explains, the piece regarding censorship. War is often ungracious in not providing the battlefield or “good ground” we would like. Sometimes strategy, timing and a hundred other important issues deal us a bad hand. For this reason, we must be honest with ourselves what the immovable pieces are. Now that we know some of these pieces, let’s continue discussing some of the pieces of censorship that are affecting our lives and our republic.

Digital media

In today’s America, the current administration, many major US and foreign corporate entities and those they direct to “moderate” or censor the speech of political opponents, has become pervasive, especially via their coercion of all media, their networks and parent corporations or owners. The attack on our constitutional rights and privacy is being waged aggressively around the clock, every day of every month and every year. There’s an entire strategy for this by the administration, the GOP and their foreign allies, such as Russia, China and those within their spheres of influence.

Then there are others, such as the places we all connect on social media, like LinkedIn, FB, Meta, X, Parler, Truth Social and so on. No matter how you access your online interests, your data is being collected and it has enormous value to those that have it in their grubby little paws. Like so many other AI surprises we’re all getting lately, the collection and exploitation of our personal data is one of the most dangerous and pernicious.

Let me tell you a short personal story for a moment, and those of you who’ve ever been robbed or burglarized will identity with this instantly. In my long life, on two occasions my home was burglarized. Once your home has been burglarized, there is a deep, unshakeable disgust that you’ve been horribly violated. Strangers entered your home and rifled through everything you own, no matter how personal. It doesn’t matter what they touched, because everything feels dirty, contaminated and tainted, even those items of little value to the thieves but deeply sentimental and personal to you. This is how I now feel when using digital technology due to the data collectors.

Everything we all do publicly is now collected digitally. If you take a drive and stop for gas and pay with a credit or debit card, there is a transaction record. Your purchases when you go inside for a coffee or snack, is digitized. At a minimum, your presence and purchase have been collected. The store probably has cameras and audio recording and anyone with a phone taking photos outside could be collecting images and audio, even accidently. All of that data goes to data owners. Data owners believe that they hold the keys to the kingdom and in many ways, they are right. Data is the new nuclear weapon of influence.

Data owners use that data to build digital profiles of everyone. What I mean by digital profiles is that every single piece of data collected becomes like those paint by number sets from childhood. Every morsel of data they collect on you, fills in a little piece of your identity. Collect enough pieces and you can clearly see the identity of any person. Knowing a person’s identity can then be used to increase the owner’s ability to influence you, to buy a product or service, vote a certain way or shape the way you perceive the world around you. Amazon for example uses their data to suggest products to you, remembers your purchases and even notes your dislikes. This is why those us who use Amazon’s services, receive ads and suggestions ad nauseum. Even typing in their search box for what you want, they are already picking categories of products for you to shop. You search on Amazon, and instantly, your Facebook is pitching you an add for a product, you’ve just viewed or searched.

Google vacuums the data from your searches, mail and all of their other office apps, and uses this to digitize your identity. Here’s a quick note from the influence operator world, anyone who understands your identity well, is the person or machine most capable of influencing you. Google is insatiable when it comes to your data. Now to be fair, yes AI and related data collection also has positive benefits, such as increasing search speed or at one time, enhancing your search results. At the moment though, I will no longer trust Google as far as I can throw them.

Throughout my career, I have had to employ research in order to offer military commands my best insights, support my operations and to innovate strategy, techniques and tactics for success. Much of the required research to analyze what are called, TAs or Target Audiences, is found outside of classified systems. This means what is called, “open-source” intelligence which means that you and I could see the same thing if we searched the same thing. Like my peers and colleagues, Google was the preferred or most common search engine on government systems. In the past couple of years, Google’s search engine has been hollowed out and serves only the most minor research.

Anyone who “googles” anything often, will surely have noticed how much is now missing from searches. Since I include a fair amount of history, global national security reporting and other background in my essays, I have discovered just how little is now available from using their search engine. It’s not just me either. Even prominent historical references either are no longer available or only have one reference that tells the story only one way. Understanding history well, requires seeing situations from a variety of perspectives, if you wish to actually understand them.

Now that I have allowed my security clearance to expire, I, like you, now only have access to publicly available information. My writing and most of our lives, depend on access to credible information. This is another problem with Google searches, a search places an AI section at the top of the page and some of the sources their AI provides, are nowhere near credible. How can Americans make sense of our ever-more complicated world without credible sources. Google is censoring us and their motives are to me suspect, other than their greed and fight for power with other big data owners.

Facebook, is infamous for their digital treachery. Their list of losses in court have been staggering. It would take a book to sort through all of them so I’ll just offer a handful of the most prominent.

• Facebook allowed a private tech firm named Cambridge Analytica, owned by Republican super-donor, Robert Mercer to illegally harvest the data of Facebook users for the purpose of personalizing pro-Trump messaging to American voters during the 2016 election period. The data also ended up in the hands of a Russian digital researcher. They settled the case for 725 million to avoid a public trial.

• Facebook was found responsible for exacerbating a 2017 genocide in Myanmar, formerly Burma. They didn’t even follow their own standards and did nothing to mitigate the genocide largely caused by their willingness to support a genocidal military junta.

  

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  "Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar. Scholars, reporters, and United Nations investigators agree that the social media giant played a role in an explosion of ethnic conflict in 2017 that led to the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands Rohingya Muslims in Northern Myanmar.
  
  Riding a wave of liberalization, Facebook entered the country and quickly dominated online spaces, with early the entire internet-connected population of the country using Facebook products. Challenges related to culture and technology meant that the conversations received little moderation. Facebook feeds quickly became populated with hateful speech, including misinformation seeded by the ruling military authority. As a result, Facebook played a critical role in the explosion of violence, especially during the 2017 genocide."
  
  "Facebook’s entry into Myanmar provides a vivid picture of how corporations behave in an absolute lacuna of legal accountability. Facebook knowingly sold a product that tended to exacerbate political divisions and spread misinformation, and did so in a market with significant pre-existing risk factors. It adopted no mechanisms to mitigate those harms, failing even to enforce its own voluntary standards. In so doing, Facebook helped facilitate a genocide."
  
  - Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable
  - Daniel Zaleznik
  - Systemic Justice.org

• Just recently, a New Mexico court found META/ FB guilty in a landmark case that will cost them $375 million dollars. They were found guilty of failing to protect children and of not removing clear evidence

  

"SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico jury found Tuesday that social media conglomerate Meta is harmful to children's mental health and in violation of state consumer protection law.

The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial. Jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety. The jury determined Meta violated parts of the state's Unfair Practices Act on accusations the company hid what it knew about about the dangers of child sexual exploitation on its platforms and impacts on child mental health."

- Jury finds Meta's platforms are harmful to children in 1st wave of social media addiction lawsuits
- PBS
- By Morgan Lee of the Associated Press

Professionally speaking, I find Facebook a cesspool of threats, both digital and as a premier host for scam artists. Just this past week, the iconic Lloyd’s of London, reported that a full two-thirds of their fraud cases, originated on META platforms. META is a parent company of Facebook.

As someone recognized in my field, I know fake accounts, bots, propaganda and so much more regarding threats to Americans via influence. I have repeatedly reported fake accounts on Facebook for ages. Not once have they removed the accounts. They allow pro-MAGA bots to infect most high-traffic threads. Their censorship is in how they moderate anti-MAGA users. They are slightly more subtle than LinkedIn, who not only moderates accounts but allows outside companies to do the dirty work for them.

To be fully transparent, I’ve been at war with LinkedIn for over a decade. The war began as I was retiring from the army and began using social media. Over a few months, I connected with a handful of national security professionals and fought the army of Russian and MAGA trolls spewing the conspiracy theories we’ve all come to know regarding the 2016 election. LinkedIn’s platform became so problematic for US national security that the GOAT of US national security and intelligence reporting, Jeff Stein, then of Newsweek, wrote a full-length expose’ about our efforts titled, “How Russia Is Using LinkedIn as a Tool of War Against Its U.S. Enemies.

Today, LinkedIn is still moderating or allowing external companies to moderate. Again, here is a personal story to make my point. When I first subscribed, I acquired a significant following where my posts would typically range between a couple of thousand views and up to 20 plus thousand. Like here, on Substack I wrote the truth about what was occurring while that LinkedIn was a maze of foreign and MAGA influence. Like the 2016 debacle with the Russian and MAGA trolls, my writing is now fully moderated by a Canadian company called ICUC. They are in turn owned by Dentsu Advertising Services, headquartered in London. Not the US, Canada nor the UK will rein in these corporate hitmen like ICUC who specialize in censorship, via AI. Now corporate oligarchs don’t even do their own dirty work, they outsource to companies like ICUC and this problem is far larger than just an isolated critic or two. This is about protecting their brand from the truth.

Their clients are the who’s who of corporate power and includes companies like Sony, Chevron, Starbucks, Tim Horton’s, Google, etc. These companies pay ICUC to “manage” their online presence. This includes moderation of their critics. Although this is corporate censorship and not illegal, many of the CEOs, owners and board of directors of these behemoth corporations, also fund the current administration’s agendas and their party. They only care about their bottom line, no matter who gets hurt. Such is the state of today’s corporate world. Selling out democracy and its citizens, is the furthest thing from moral.

The last section of this limited overview must focus briefing on the coercion of the media industry by the administration. Their specialty is extortion or buying off potential opponents who in turn, sell all of us out. Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC, Federal Communications Commission has made quite a name for himself by threatening to cancel broadcast licenses for networks in order to stop them from being too critical of the administration’s immoral and illegal agendas. Their Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert events did not pan out well for Carr and the administration, but to this day, they continue operate with timidity when it comes to reporting the truth about Trump and the GOP. In many cases, they won’t even report a story at all, let alone with timidity. In effect, they have been censored.

We’ve all followed the CBS debacle of them bending low enough to kiss the hindquarters of the president. They put Bari Wiess at the head of the news division, destroyed 60 Minutes and all to curry favor with a man who has no loyalty, except apparently to Putin. There will certainly and justifiably be antitrust lawsuits over this one and in fact, it was we the consumers who have filed the first one. That lawsuit is only the beginning for the merger as that several states are lining up to pursue more antitrust lawsuits opposing the merger. Wiess has been credibly accused of demanding dishonest, pro-Trump reporting at 60 Minutes. Yes, you guessed it, more censorship.

Summary

Phew, this was a long one. If you’ve made this far, I’m beyond grateful. Even at this length, we’ve only scratched the surface regarding types of censorship. The bottom-line today is that while we are busy resisting tyranny, the odds are stacked against us and to a large extent, illegally by the Trump/ MAGA regime. We are no longer engaged in a typical back and forth political battle between political parties. We are a diverse mixture of political interests all pulling for one thing, the restoration of a functioning republic where we retain our rights, are not robbed commercially or by a greedy GOP-run government, that is now a far-right extremist movement, rather than a political party. They are funded by we-the-people’s hard-earned taxes dollars and self-serving billionaires that don’t care at all about our system of government.

As we’ve seen throughout this essay, censorship by the government whether first-hand or via proxies, denies us the truth we require and deserve as US citizens. From the White House and the Republican-led Congress, we only get lies and stonewalling. Helluva a way to run a republic. Media is too afraid to challenge the administration and either writes fluff when discussing the Trump crowd or ignores it altogether. The music industry that we depended on in the late sixties and early seventies for protest soundtracks and anthems, are absent from the resistance, with few exceptions.

Their studios are inflicted with the same cowardice as the movie and TV industry. Those old protest songs sustained protests, the movement and are remembered and still played today. Since the majority of studios are in their own self-imposed “witness protection program,” maybe we can repurpose those classics. We need our own powerful resistance soundtrack that inspires and carries our fight on its shoulders. If there are any takers out there, please join us. We’ll sing and march our hearts out for this all-important cause. Even this administration cannot censor the music in our hearts.

The Republicans are wielding powerful weapons of influence to rally their base and suppress ours, most often by censorship directly or via hired thugs like ICUC and Dentsu. The odds are somewhat against us, but we have a secret weapon that the opposition doesn’t. We’re fighting for something real and tangible for ourselves and the generations that follow. The GOP is running on the fumes of conspiracy theories while that their dear leader is losing support by the day. They do not live in the same reality as we do and therefore have lost their moral spine, while that ours has stiffened. Our resilience trumps their lagging enthusiasm for being abused by the person they were conned into believing in.

In military-speak, we have what is called the “will to fight,” a psychological advantage, and we have the numbers to go with the will. We will have to work both harder and smarter, while that we have little to no control over the government that is attempting to steal our future. America has always loved the underdog. It’s part of our identity and it will carry us through in November, regardless of what the spineless Republican Party throws and their oligarchs throw at us. They won’t play fair, or obey the law. We must accept that reality and overcome these obstacles anyway. Morality, numbers and the constitution are on our side. The American people have yet to fail to protect our republic for a quarter of a millennia. We’re not about to start losing now.

My very best for everyone’s weekend, and onward to victory.

Paul

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TAT readers,

If we are to recover a say in the US government, we must see the influence battlefield as it is, not as we’d prefer it. Only then can we plot and execute a successful strategy to begin the accountability due every sitting Republican in our congress. Electoral wins for the resistance have become enormously more challenging due to a long list of Republican tactics, laws and government control. Radical, mid-census gerrymandering, new unconstitutional laws shoved down citizen’s throats in red-states, our extreme right-wing activist SCOTUS, executive branch thuggery at DHS, the FBI and countless local police departments around the nation, a virtual absence of respect for law from the DOJ, censorship etc. etc. etc. are the hallmarks of fascist regimes.

As a Texan, I’ve long been aware that Republican Politics, is a blood- sport. This coming November, we’re all going to experience a historic moment in our extraordinary history that puts our patriotism to the ultimate test, stopping a fascist Republican regime that has all the advantages. Every moment of the current administration has been dedicated to one thing and one thing only, to fully control the US government beyond challenge. It’s all there in Project 2025, published ages before the 2024 election, and for all to see. I believe the American people are too bright to continue buying the GOP’s road apples (midwestern for horse manure), but will that be enough in November? Now, it’s up to all of us true American patriots to put a hard-stop to the overthrow of our republic. If we are to succeed, we must have a strategy or we risk losing the opportunity we have in November.

What follows is my professional analysis of the most critical vulnerabilities within the resistance effort, all of which could be easily rectified if we had leadership. As I have written often, there is no DNC in the game, so I will ignore any potential value they may have, simply because no one has any idea whether they will respond, or not. This raises one more note to regarding this essay. I have written several essays regarding strategy, vulnerabilities and GOP weaknesses, ever since I wrote the Democratic Party’s autopsy just days after the 2024 election. I will not repeat most of what is in those essays but will include links and ideas related to those essays, where I feel they may assist the reader.

Military strategy and planning is not something that can be well explained in an essay, however I can offer you a few uncomplicated insights that should be of value to everyone that is willing to stand up against tyranny. The most valuable insights are about focusing on the GOP’s vulnerabilities and our own. The GOP deficits are to be exploited (attacked) with any and all tactics, while that we protect against them doing the same to us. Our vulnerabilities may seem insurmountable at the moment, but this is far from true. After today’s essay, you will see that our vulnerabilities can be corrected while that the GOP’s are systemic and not fixable at all before the midterms. We have a five month head start if we get busy protecting our vulnerabilities now. We’ll need it because again, the DNC should have begun campaigning for the midterms a year and a half ago. No sense as they say, “in beating a dead horse.”

Strategy development requires as a first step, clearly defining the problem and doing so as succinctly as possible. All army recruits learn something called “land navigation.” It’s a test that challenges you to be able to read a military map, understand topography and be able to chart a course to your intended destination. For many, this is quite challenging but most can learn proficiency by listening and learning. The old adage when plotting a course on your land nav map, is that if you begin your plotted course, even a half a compass degree off, you will be very far off course the further you go. Compass headings radiate outwards like spokes on a bike tire, and the further out they go, the further each point is from the points on either side. This is why we begin our anti-fascist strategy with the clearest and most succinct definition of the problem. We want to hit the target as perfectly as possible.

My definition of the threat from the GOP, is below and despite its dystopian implications, is extremely accurate based on years of observing and researching the GOP’s and related behaviors. As the inimitable Maya Angelou so eloquently warned us, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

My definition of the problem goes something like this; 

“Today’s Republican Party enables the administration, global authoritarians and oligarchs to undermine and dismantle our democracy by wielding the power given to them by, we-the-people, against us. Their purpose is straightforward; unconstrained power for only a handful of men and their merry band of oligarchs. The future they intend for all of us is, a modern form of “serfdom.”

- Cobaugh
- 2026

There are four primary vulnerabilities for the resistance. Of course, nothing stands alone and in this case, each of these primary four have dozens of issues associated with them. This essay is not an attempt to turn it into a book, and so will only address the four most dangerous vulnerabilities. These are also the ones that should they be addressed, could pay off handsomely come November.

1. Outrage isn’t enough. What the hell are we fighting for? We must have a flexible and evolving narrative of what we are fighting for, not a laundry list of outrages.

2. Stop scampering from daily outrage to the next one tomorrow.

   1. Focus on three or four main issues that are not necessarily perceived as progressive issues, every hour of every day around the clock.

      1. The four I recommend at this point in time are;

         1. Inflation

         2. The war with Iran

         3. Epstein, Epstein and more Epstein

         4. Immigration cruelty and lawlessness

3. Take the fight directly to every Republican congressman or Senator’s home district.

4. Turn out the apathetic voters

Now let’s go through the list above. I’ll try and keep the discussion tight and focused. After all, it is the weekend and no one wants to read an entire book with their morning coffee or evening beverage.

Part I: Outrage isn’t enough. What the hell are we fighting for? We must have a flexible and evolving narrative of what we are fighting for, not a laundry list of outrages.

Narratives matter more than all of the propaganda in the entire world. Okay, here’s the most succinct understanding of narrative for the purpose of influencing people.

Despite the tendency of most to talk about narrative as a story, this is not accurate in my profession. Narrative, is how human beings make meaning out of everything they experience throughout their lives. All of our individual experiences are unlike those of any other human being. Everything we experience creates in lay terms, a personalized filter between our ears that converts our experiences into meaning. Narrative Warfare, my core specialty, is a battle for control of the identity of an audience. Propaganda, fake news, conspiracy theories, historical revisionism and even truth, are all weapons in the battle for our identities.

For example, someone born and raised in Boston, will nearly always, have a narrative filter that sees New York sports teams as the enemy or in kinder terms, a spirited rivalry. No amount of statistics or game replays will convince them of anything positive about NY teams. Those fans have been indoctrinated over the course of their lives to only see a sporting event in terms of enemy vs. friendly. Even identical twins grow to be unique individuals, even though they have the same DNA. From the time they are toddlers, they experience things differently and therefore, grow different identities. They may be very similar, but their uniqueness is absolute. Once people have grown into a specific identity, it often takes decades it is very difficult to dislodge. Until then, whatever their identity becomes, makes roughly 90% of their decisions subconsciously.

This is why FOX News watchers will never see, read or hear things as we do. Their identity has been built by over thirty years of conditioning them to extreme-right-wing beliefs, even though they see themselves as patriots. Nothing will change them at this point. That is the reality that we must all accept. The identity of the person we knew before FOX News, in a matter of speaking, no longer exists as we knew them prior to their FOX addiction. Barring anything traumatic, the person you knew, may never return to their original self. Instead of fighting this, just accept it and focus your energy elsewhere.

Controlling the narrative of a brainwashed audience, is like hitching a team of horses to pull a wagon. The slightest cue you give them while driving the team, will be heeded, if they are well and regularly trained. Once a person identifies with a narrative, their actions become predictable and those actions simply become muscle memory, after decades of conditioning. Those still voting Republican are brainwashed and can be predictably triggered to do or believe whatever they are told. This is why the GOP has a dishonest narrative for everything; immigration, patriotism, the constitution, the economy, etc. Those narratives are how they control their audiences. The resistance, is still yet to form their first narrative. Movements require narratives that express the meaning of their cause. We are fighting blind and are unarmed on the narrative battlefield. A good narrative becomes the glue that holds a cause together and inspires its members to action.

We must create a narrative for every issue we’re fighting and those narratives must be relatable to our overarching narrative.

Part II: Stop scampering from daily outrage to the next one tomorrow.

Listen guys, I watch social media closely. I look for trends and how others see those trends. The administration and the GOP are leading the resistance around like a little dog on a leash. They do this easily by creating a daily outrage or two. When they do, resistance folks on social media scamper from one outrage to the next, like those adorable little Minions that our children and grandchildren love so much. The only problem for us not living in cartoon world is that, if we spend all of our time scurrying from one issue to another, we don’t focus on the very serious vulnerabilities that the Republicans have perilously stumbled into. I’m not suggesting that we ignore the GOP’s cruelty, corruption and lawlessness, but we must maintain massive pressure on their vulnerabilities. That’s how we get media to hear us instead of the opposition.

The resistance needs media support and under the current conditions, most mainstream media is cowering under their desks hoping that the White House won’t threaten them again. As they hide, they remove and minimize the content that would truthfully damage this administration and the GOP. In military terms, I’m asking you to instead of scampering about, to “concentrate our forces” on a handful of the GOP’s most vulnerable issues. Concentration of forces simply means to mass your troops and resources at a vulnerability of your adversary. In the simplest of terms, by running towards every daily outrage, we are just using up our time, energy and resources in a manner that doesn’t make a big enough noise to garner the attention of the mainstream press. We need coverage and not just the reactive kind. In Narrative Warfare, “he who goes first, wins.” We are exclusively reactive and this will cost us the midterms if it continues.

Part III: Take the fight directly to every Republican congressman or Senator’s home district.

Last July, I wrote a five-part series that was also a “how-to guide to defeating the current regime. I covered this topic in-depth throughout the series and so, will not rehash those points here. Here at this embedded link you can reach the last part of the series, an overview, which also includes links to the five part series.

The reasons for taking the fight to the Republican’s home districts is pure common-sense. In a fair election, the Republicans are so deep in the polling that they would certainly lose the House of Representatives. The Senate may hold for them but it is not a certainty either. They are hiding from their constituents and their social media game is not working anywhere close to where it has been the past decade of Trumpism. For example, I often take the pulse of how they are doing from Facebook and other social media platforms. GOP representatives and Senators are avoiding any controversial posts, preferring fluff photo-ops with anyone they can find that will agree to be in their photo-op. Even then, roughly 80% of the time the comment sections are filled with powerful derision from their constituents and those who are in other districts.

So in this logic train, if the GOP elected politicians are unpopular, that is a key vulnerability. It won’t be helpful though if we don’t take advantage of that vulnerability. The logic says to hit them hard on all of their social media with comments about Epstein, the war and especially inflation. This tactic puts your comments between the congressman or woman and their constituents. It’s a way of forcing their constituents to see how deeply and pervasively they are disliked. No one wants to back a corrupt politician, especially if others can see their name and face. The longtime GOP diehards that continue to vote for Trump, will not abandon the GOP, but that leaves everyone else to weigh your comments for truth and reason. This is one way to draw independent voters to our side and off their couches. There are roughly 30% of Republican voters that will never acknowledge truth. That leaves 70% of voters that are potential allies.

Yes, when you look at your social media feeds, take a moment to leave a short negative comment that is true. At least place one of those little laughing or angry emojis on their posts. One warning though… do not make comments that reflect partisanship. “Go blue” or “blue wave” will destroy any progress you make. America is so very fed up with partisanship. This is why we should avoid at all possible the mention of anything that wreaks of left/right, Dem/ Republican or conservative vs. liberal. After all, it’s not just Democrats that are furious with the regime and their willfully dishonest supporters. The resistance should always be branded as a movement of patriotic Americans defending our style of government and the liberty it provides, not a right vs. left partisan battle.

Part IV: Turn out the apathetic voters

I won’t waste too much time on this section because I have already partially addressed this earlier. Winning in November is a numbers game. Before the radical gerrymandering war begun by a terrified Trump and Republican Party, our battle was far more promising. We must now make up for any potential losses in the gerrymandered states. This means that we must try even harder and work smarter. As mentioned, there are only roughly 30% of hardcore Republican voters. They are too brainwashed to be reached so don’t waste too much effort on them. Our vulnerabilities are apathy and an absence of a resistance narrative. Among the roughly 30-35% of committed voters within the resistance there is indeed strength, but the question remains, how do we get voters off the couch to vote for the resistance, when the majority of them are fed up with our overly corrupt political system in general? This must be figured out quickly. One thing that would be of assistance is an overarching narrative that tells voters what our agenda is.

Summary

Today’s essay intended to give everyone an overview of our current situation and offers some recommendations to capitalize on the overwhelming unpopularity of this administration. Those who ignore such opportunities will always lose to those who may be horrible but have a plan. For decades, the GOP has built a massive and powerful media machine to “sell” their nonsense. They are good at this and have the money from their selfish oligarchy to fund unlimited media blitzes. This is an obstacle although not an insurmountable one. Remember, the GOP is the minority party, even though they currently control our entire government. I cannot at this time foresee this GOP converting independents and apathetic voters. They are that unpopular. We must act now though, if we are to make any real progress before the midterms.

Professionally, I have never worked on a political campaign, but I do know influence and have written, executed and assessed my own successful campaigns in my capacity within the military and extended national security community. What I conveyed in this piece, are the basics of any campaigning, regardless of its intentions. We are under assault every single day by the Republican media monstrosity and there is almost nothing of substance of quantity coming from our side. What I’m offering here are the basics that we can all contribute to since the DNC went into the Witness Protection Program. We can do this, and for our children and grandchildren’s sake, we must.

Onward,

Paul

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I’m so sorry. I just sent out today’s essay and somehow, I accidently deleted it. Some of you may have received it but now I am trying to find a way to recover it. If I don’t, that knocking sound will be me knocking my head against the door jamb!

Dear TAT readers,

Today I want to share some historical knowledge about the Fourth of July, offering a short history lesson that explains why we resist oppression and tyranny with such righteous anger. I suspect many don’t know all of today’s historical stories. All I can say is that all of them inspire me and I hope they will do the same for all of you. As I noted in my last essay about why I refuse to celebrate the buffoonish administration’s version of this auspicious holiday, I’m a true believer in our system of government, not for partisanship, but because I believe deeply in our founding principles, mangled so heinously by the current SCOTUS and of course, the administration dismantling our republic. One of today’s stories about the fourth, seems almost mystically preordained by the very “creator,” spoken of by Jefferson in our founding declaration.

Longtime readers know that I have a deep love of history and especially regarding our founders, their courage and their brilliant progressive (for the time) ideals that populate our constitution and its later amendments. Although I have an undergrad degree in history and that I absorbed so much personal mentoring by my history and government teacher father, I don’t consider myself a true historian, so much as a well-informed and devoted student of history. Today I will share a couple of our Fourth of July stories that demonstrate how central that this date is to how we identify ourselves as Americans. I hope you will find this interesting and helpful in your resistance to the tyranny of the ruling Republican Party’s descent into fascism, autocracy, dictatorship etc. The truth is, this administration fits into many such categories, so please feel free to just insert the word of your choice.

Onward

Introduction

It would acutely disrespectful not to first acknowledge that the signing of our Declaration of Independence was arguably, the first official step in becoming the world’s longest surviving constitutional republic. That doesn’t mean that there were not other forms of democracy prior, such as Greece and Rome during ancient periods. It is no coincidence that the “father of our constitution,” and fourth president, James Madison intensely studied such forms from ancient Greece forward. He did so for primarily one reason and that was to find out both both the benefits and detriments to the idea of what was often labeled, “republicanism,” in the colonial era. First, a couple of basics about the founding of our system of governance.

Madison, recognized as an elite scholar on politics and representative government, prepared for the convention to ratify our constitution by analyzing similar representative governments from ancient Greece until the colonial era. His “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies” became the written version of his analysis and can still be read today in the Library of Congress. He paid to print his analysis in a handful of remarkable little books of 39 pages, printed to fit into the pocket of his fellow delegates for the purpose of discussion and debate at the convention. His stamp more than any other scholar, is on our constitution.

"Winston Churchill once said that a man has to choose whether to nail his life to the cross of thought or the cross of action. But Churchill managed to do both and to do them well, although it is surely the case that we remember him more for his statesmanship. Like Churchill, James Madison was both a statesman and a scholar, as William Pierce of Georgia noted in his character sketch of “Mr. Maddison” at the Constitutional Convention. Americans are more aware of Madison as the fourth President of the United States than they are of his scholarly writings. I think, though, that it was in the realm of ideas rather than practical political jockeying that Madison most excelled and found his vocation. He was a good but, honestly, not great politician. While he had a
natural aptitude for legislative committee work, he was a poor orator. He was,
however, an exceptional scholar of politics and political philosophy and, in
particular, a brilliant pioneer in the study of republican government in the
modern world. The following pages are meant to acquaint readers and citizens with Madison’s discoveries and groundbreaking ideas as he engaged in a study of ancient and modern republicanism. Readers are also invited to experience with Madison the excitement he felt when he believed he had discovered the republic “for which philosophy has been searching, and humanity been sighing, from the most remote ages.”1.”

- The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism
- Cambridge University Press, 978-1-107-02947-7 
- Colleen A. Sheehan

Without our founders’ deep legal scholarship and progressive political philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, championed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their esteemed colleagues in the Committee of Five, our Declaration of Independence could have foretold a very different opening act for America. Our Declaration of Independence outlines our political philosophy and our constitution, codifies the application of that philosophy.

Now, finally to the stories I promised. You will find in each, a deep and passionate love of our fledgling government, the courage to breath life into it and through the past 250 years, the willingness of all Americans, to defend it. Each story informs us of just who we are as Americans, be it the structure of the republic or in the philosophy of our founders. In our Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to our constitution, and especially within the legal parameters of our First Amendment, we now have a clear lens to see how many of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are being slaughtered by the administration and an aberrant, corrupt and shameless Supreme Court. I take a great deal of comfort in and acquire all the resilience I require to defend what over 1.3 million Americans died defending, from what we celebrate during our upcoming holiday. All I have known throughout my life, especially from my Midwestern roots, have been equally inspired… until the Trump/ MAGA GOP era. It’s up to us to set this right.

Our first celebration of the Fourth

Massachusetts, gave us our first day to celebrate, exactly two years prior to the signing of the Declaration. In Worcester, Ma, some of our earliest and most fervent patriots declared on July 4th, 1774 that their political club would establish rules regarding the arming of patriots and their readiness to fight Britain, should the relationship between the colonies and Britain come to war. This set off similar requirements across Massachusetts and not a minute too soon. Nine months later and only a little over 40 miles NW of Worcester, Britain marched on Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, where the “shot heard round the world” was fired on a small bridge on the edge of Lexington at the advancing 7-8 hundred advancing British troops. The war that followed changed US and global history forever.

"On July 4, 1774, exactly two years before the United States declared independence, a patriotic club in Worcester, Massachusetts, decided that each member should have in the ready two pounds of gunpowder and twelve flints. With the Massachusetts Government Act, Parliament had just revoked key provisions of the colony’s provincial charter (like a constitution), and the people of Worcester vowed they were ready to fight to protect their political rights. Two months later 4,622 militiamen—half the adult population of this rural county—rode or walked for as many as fifty miles to gather along Worcester’s Main Street and shut down the governmental machinery at the local level. The show of force was so overwhelming that the British military commander in Boston did not dare send in his troops.

Similar events were staged in other county seats. In Plymouth, some 4,000 patriots were so excited after they closed down the court that they tried to move Plymouth Rock up to the courthouse, but that proved more difficult than unseating government officials. So ended British rule in all of Massachusetts outside of Boston. Then on October 4, 1774, twenty-one months before the Declaration of Independence, the people of Worcester said it was time to start a new government from scratch. The revolution had begun."

- The War for Independence
- Gilder Lehrman Institute (GLI) of American History
- by Ray Raphael

The near mystical story of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Adams and Jefferson had been at the core of our fight for independence from the very beginning of the colonies’ fervor for independence. Both were deeply educated in the classics and the law, men of note within their own circles and ardently convinced that we had reached the point that independence from Britain was the only way forward for the colonies. Having met in the Continental Congress in 1775, they became fast friends and co-conspirators in every aspect of the soon to occur war with Britain. In most reading, it is understood that Adams was the one who selected Jefferson to be the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence.

They had experienced every bit of our pursuit of independence together, whether at home or during the long times they spent abroad as US Ambassadors to England and France. Post war, Washington served two terms as our first president with Adams following him for one term until the onset of the election of 1800. It is often termed the “dirtiest election” in US history. Adams and Jefferson battled for the White House for a second time. Jefferson won the election but the damage was done. They lost each other as best friends over the vitriol in the campaign and over political appointments made by Adams before leaving office. They would not speak for another 12 years.

Another prominent founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush and a friend to both Adams and Jefferson, felt that after Jefferson left office after a second term, that it had been far too long for these dear friends who’d traveled the long and arduous road to independence together, to no longer speak or write. It took the good Doctor well over a year to manage a rekindling of their dearly missed and mourned correspondence. That correspondence reignited the deep and abiding friendship they’d shared through thick and thin. They would go on to correspond regularly until the day they died, and this is the pseudo mystical part. They both died within hours of each other on the Fourth of July, 1826, exactly fifty years to the day, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"The news of Adams’s death reached Boston by the end of the day. The Columbian Centinel (Boston, MA) was aligned with Federalist sentiment in the Federalist Era and used mourning bars, large dark lines to signify mourning for former president Adams in its July 8, 1826 edition. Mourning bars have been used by newspaper publishers as early as the 17th century to communicate to readers that someone has died. According to newspaper reports, Adams’s last words were, “Jefferson still lives.” In the course of a few days, news of Jefferson’s death arrived from Virginia and the next issue of the Columbian Sentinel included the headline, “Another GREAT MAN is No More! and our columns again are shrowed in respectful mourning.”

- Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4th
- Library of Congress
- Amber Paranick
- July 6th, 2022

President James Monroe follows Adams and Jefferson, dying on July 4th, 1831

Three of our founders who became president died on the fourth of July. President Monroe, now 73 and long reported ill, passed away at his son-in-law’s home in NYC, five years to the day after Adams and Jefferson.

Finally, the miracle of July 4th, 1863

It was the middle of our Civil War, things had been going poorly for the Union Army and Robert E. Lee had again ventured north of the Mason-Dixon line again and were rummaging through southeastern Pennsylvania for supplies, harassing Union political activities and looking to defeat the Army of the Potomac in a large, decisive battle. Both armies met at Gettysburg and from July 1st through July 4th were engaged in the largest battle of the war. President Lincoln, deeply concerned over Union leadership had already fired four commanding generals before handing command to Meade, three days before Gettysburg. As the news began filtering into Washington about the battle, Lincoln sat in the Telegraph Office along with senior staff and some cabinet members, hoping against previous experiences, that they would finally achieve a decisive major victory over Confederate forces, which would have been a first for the Union at this stage of the war.

Casualties were mounting, he had deep anxiety regarding his senior military leadership and as if things couldn’t get worse, the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, was involved in a carriage accident the second day of the battle. The carriage she had been riding in had been sabotaged and was seen as an assassination attempt on the President, who’d been in the carriage earlier. Lincoln suffered his whole life from depression and the way the war was going, was concerned that Gettysburg would fail to give him the decisive win over Robert E. Lee he needed militarily and politically. If only he could have known that by the end of the 4th of July, his luck would reverse itself in an extraordinary way.

By the end of the day promising news was beginning to trickle in over the telegraph wires and hinting at a Union victory. By the morning of the 4th, he knew for sure that he finally had his big, decisive win over Lee. As it turns out, this wasn’t the only big news of the day. Grant, who Lincoln would make the commander of all Union Forces in a few more weeks, added another major victory at Vicksburg on the Mississippi river. July fourth, 1863 would be the turning point of the war. Despite another nearly two years of war, the Southern war effort had peaked and would never recover as a peer threat to Union forces.

Okay, that’s enough history for one essay and unless you’re as passionate about it as I am, it may feel a bit like an old history class from high school or undergrad studies. For me, it is not the names and dates but the people in our history that inspires me. Like our founders, we live in dangerous times. To win our freedom, we took on an oppressive king, much as we must do now with the current administration and their corrupt and anti-American political party. During the Civil War, we fought the Confederacy who espoused very similar ideology to what today’s Republicans spew. White Christian Nationalism, the oligarchy of the cotton and slave trade and who could see the Civil War as anything but political violence against our republic. MAGA is nothing new. It’s the same ole’ racism, greed and political violence we saw during the Civil War. The only difference today is that it is all of us that are intended to become slaves to modern oligarchy.

As I wrote last week regarding Trump’s obscene America 250 party, I will not celebrate the treasonous Republican way. I will celebrate those who forged a powerful nation, originally intended to further the liberty and rights of the masses. I will honor the men and women who had not only the vision, but the courage to breathe life into our fledgling nation, built on the premise of honoring everyone’s “inalienable human rights.” Words can be magical and when I read our history, I may mourn our historical errors like slavery and the genocide of our indigenous tribes but, will hold that pain in one hand while weighing what we’ve contributed to the world in the other.

This administration and the GOP have similar intentions for us as the historical pain I hold in one hand. That is not the end of the story though. From the very beginning, the power has been in the hands of we-the-people and there is far more good in America than bad. America can “walk and chew gum at the same time though.” We can address our past errors in one hand while reforging the American dream with the other.

Publius Redux

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